July 27, 2009

Ryan's Letter:

Subject: Being happy doesn't mean everything is perfect. It means you decide to see beyond the imperfections.


Hello Everyone!
This week has been really crazy. We lost three of our main investigators. We decided that we needed to drop Marian because she really wasn't progressing. Unfortunately, I think she was glad we dropped her. Linda was doing pretty good but for whatever reason refused to come back to church. After a lot of prayers we decided that it would be best to drop her for a couple of weeks and then pick her up again. Just as we were heading over to her house to drop her, she called and dropped us! I guess some anti friend has been talking to her lately. The other one was Carlos who has said he wants to get baptized but has flaked out of every lesson for the past eight weeks. Hopefully, they will all recognize that they really need the gospel once they go for a while without it.
But Heavenly Father has also blessed us so much this week. Because we finally had time to tract and visit potential investigators, we focused all of our efforts and prayers on finding new people to teach. The first person we found was on Tuesday and she seems like she will be pretty solid. But Elder Hansen and I decided that this was not enough. On Thursday, we found another person who want to meet with us at least weekly. Then on Friday we found two more! The best was on Saturday when I was with one of our Zone leaders on exchanges. We met Mike late in the afternoon and he asked if we could go for a walk with him. We walked for about a mile, stopped at a park and taught the first lesson, then walked back. As we walked home, there was a silent time for about five minutes. Then Mike said that he would break the silence by asking a question, but he just really enjoyed being with us. The spirit was very strong. He was planning on coming to church with us but when i called him yesterday he said he had to work last minute. But he told me not to worry because he had a lot of good news to tell me about. Hopefully meaning he read and prayed about the Book of Mormon.
Probably my favorite part of this week was our lesson with Johnny who we have been working with for about 10 weeks now. We had a lesson on 2 Nephi 31 then we asked him if he would be baptised. He said he would but he just didn't feel that he had recieved an answer that the Book of Mormon was true. I asked him if he would be willing to pray with us so we all knelt together as he offered up a prayer. His prayer was very sincere and we all knelt silently for about 5 minutes after he finished. He said he still feel unsure but that he will keep working at it. I love how dedicated he is to really find out weather or not it's true. Out of all the people I have taught soo far, he is the only investigator who is really investigating for the right reasons. And he will find his answer soon enough.
Well I love you all. I hope Sarah had a great B-day and that Jen had Fun at EFY and that she writes me and tells me about it.
Love Elder Allred