January 13, 2014

Where to begin? I guess I wrote to you Wednesday so I don't need to write to much but starting with Thursday we had a lesson planned with Gwen and we got to the house and was visiting with the family and she was still on her way home and when she got home she did not want to have a lesson she was upset cause she had to leave her mom (mom can’t be in the same house as dad/grandparents) and she was crying and upset and finally settled down and said she didn't want to be baptized cause her mom told her she wasn't ready and so in order to kind of calm her down we just talked about things she likes and rescheduled the lesson for tomorrow. well on Friday we went over to molly's, the moms and I wanted to give her an ear full, let her know what she was doing to her daughter, what she was stopping her from receiving, and had a bunch of scriptures that basically said the sins upon your head if you don't let her and talk her out of it. well we said a prayer before our visit and the instead of doing what I wanted we talked about the importance of having the gift of the holy ghost and got mom talking and sharing to us when the holy ghost has blessed her life and she has felt the impact of it in her life. And talked about faith and Alma 32 and the lesson went really good. She agreed to talking to her daughter and letting her know about the importance of the hg and totally changed her perspective on things. I learned a lesson too, I should have just planned on teaching with love from the beginning because that is what makes all the difference in teaching and I know she could feel that from us. So instead of planning on this sat for baptism we are going to plan on the 25th and hope all goes through. tomorrow as we teach were going to do a lot more hands on thinking and hope it will keep her interested and want to learn if its stuff she’s interested in and has fun doing it. 

Friday night we headed down to the valley for the tri-mission conference Saturday. We stayed with a stake president and his wife. They were super nice and Sister Palmer was a lot like you mom, she was telling me all about the Disney cruises and vacations and stuff they went on and it was funny to relate. Also Friday night since we were like 5 min from my last area I got to go see Karen and her family! It was awesome to see them again and there doing well. She’s a ward missionary now. 

Then Saturday morning we got up really early and I said it was going to be elder Holland coming but he got called away last minute on something important so elder wright of the 70 spoke to us instead. It wasn't elder Holland but it was really good. All the mission presidents and their wives bore there testimony's one of them I liked was one day as a mom she was sitting reading a book and her little girl got home from school and she asked how her day was and just kind of nodding her head and saying yeah as she talked about her day. Then the girl left and a little bit later she came back and slid a paper in front of the book covering it saying are you listening? And it made her think about that and listen to her kid. And to think about listening to the spirit, scriptures, people, investigators, comp, etc. another one of the testimony was about a bunch of wild kids running thru a store and the new employee being impatient and a little frustrated then when the new employee finds out those wild kids are relatives to the owner/boss they treat them completely opposite and meet there every need. And we need to see people as "relatives" of Christ everywhere we go. It was really good and reminded me of your store dad. Elder Wright talked a lot about our mission goal, vision of our mission and vision of our life, that we should all have one. And conversion level, converting ourselves before we try and convert others. As well as staying the same person after our mission. Aligning our will with gods will. love being the lubricant for missionary work and a lot of other stuff that was really good. I got to play the thimble game yesterday! At our dinner appointment the family was talking about it and they wanted to play so it was fun to play that again. Have a wonderful week! Lots of Love, Elder Stevenson