Dear Family and Friends
This week has been awesome!! We had President interviews last
week and he has really been pushing us to meet mision standards in how
many lessons we teach a week, and how many people we talk to and those
numbers. So this time in interviews he told us that they are no longer
standards but requirements. He told us that he wants every companionship
to accomplish the mission standards on contacts and first lessons. So
Elder Chipman and I worked super hard this week to do that. We had a great
week as a result. We met some new people that we are now beginning to
teach and we made some really good progress with the investigators that
we already have.
With the people that we found there were two pastors!!! The first
one was really nice. We knocked on his door and said hello, and one
thing that we have been doing for door aproaches is inviting others to
allow us to simply come in and offer a prayer to bless them and their
families and thier home. That has been working great so we made the
invitation to him. He answered with a question, "I'm fine with prayer,
but how do y'all pray?". We answered and told him how we pray and that we
do it in the name of Jesus Christ because he is our way to the Father.
So he let us in. We came into his living room and his wife looked
appauled that we were there haha. We sat down and saw that he had about 5
Bibles sitting on the coffee table. We asked him about it and he told
us that he used to be a baptist minister, then he moved to a non
denominational, and now he has a home church, which is pretty much just a
Bible study group. He also told us that he was previously a co-pastor
with John Hagge!! I don't know if y'all know who that is, but he is one
of the biggest Christian Pastors in the world. So Bud (that was this
guys name) starts asking us a few questions and we answer them. We had
thought we were just going to have a prayer, but he continued to ask
questions. So we ended up teaching a great lesson about the Book of
Mormon and what it was and how it doesn't take away from the Bible and
how it fulfills Bible prophecies even! HE loved it. At the end he said
"Well your not going to convert me because I have studied far too much;
but, I will make an exchange with y'all. How about you give me your
book, and i'll give you mine." We agreed and he gave us a book that he
had written with some of his personal ideas, and we gave him a Book of
Mormon which he agreed to read and study with his Bible. SO we will go
back and check up how he is doing in the next couple of weeks. It was
such a cool lesson that the Spirit lead 100% We were prompted in what to
say and what scriptures to quote and look up with him, and we definitely
brought the spirit to him and testified of the Book of Mormon, I hope
he studies it out and continues to feel the spirit.
The next Pastor we met was another door approach where we offered
to say a prayer with him. He agreed and we came in and it turned out
that has gone through some hard stuff and the prayer really helped.
After we prayed Elder Chipman noticed an award on the wall and he asked
what it was. Stuart told us that it was an award for being an
Outstanding Mentor. We asked about it and found out that he was Reverend
Stuart! He had a degree in Religion, and was a co pastor along with
being a child mentor/counselor. We went back a couple days later and had
a great lesson with him and he definitley felt the spirit and is going
to read a chapter we left him in the Book of Mormon. He said he is
excited for when we come back. We are going back tomorrow night. He is a
super great guy and we look forward to teaching him. When he gave us
his number he gave us his Pastor card from his church and said "That is
probably surprising a Pastor giving you his number!" It was great.
Studying the Bible has really payed off because those guys knew it backward and front! But the Spirit helped us out A LOT.
Other than those two experiences we taught our current
investigators and with one we talked about setting a baptismal date and
she agreed. We are meeting with her tomorrow to set that. Then the
parents of the boys that got baptized set a baptismal date as well!!! So
things are really going great in our area. We are having a ton of
success, and I really attribute it all to our hard work. Our mission
president told us to get these numbers and we did so the Lord is
blessing us with people to teach who are ready for the gospel. It is
great.
As well as the success in the work I am learning so much. The
Atonement is amazing it is so much more than any of us even can
understand. In our study program we are doing we are on day 6 today. And
we read a talk by Neal A. Maxwell that was incredible. It was titled
Testifying of the Glorious Atonement. He talked about how in order
to truly repent and have the atonement work in our lives we not only
need to turn away from sin but we need to change our innermost desires
and thoughts. When I thought about this I realized what a big ordeal
repentence actually is. One example: Last week as Elder Chipman and I were working really hard we were doing a lot of knocking and finding in
the hot sun, which as y'all can imagine isn't the funnest thing in the
world. So about halfway through the week we had a member invite us over
for ice cream. Going to a members house to eat ice cream is not a sin,
but we should have been working and we just said to ourselves "well his
family is out of town, and he just wants the company, and we can share a
messege with him, etc..." We were justifying our actions. We went had
the ice cream talked with him and wasted about an hour and a half of our
day. When we left we both looked at each other and said "We aren't
going to do that again." So when we got home that night in our prayers
we repented and asked for forgivness for wasting the Lord's time and
then we thought about what we can do to avoid situations that waste our
time in the future. We decided that we were just going to have to say
no. When we take members to lessons and they fall through and the member
just says "Well just come over and we can have some ice cream" or when
other oppurtunities present themselves where we could justify that we
aren't wasting time but in reality we really are. So since then we have
had a couple oppurtunities to waste time, or to stay at an appointment
for a little longer. And we have really changed that desire. We have
changed that behavior so we have repented of that wrong.
In his talk Elder Maxwell talked about how we first correct
actions to a point when we no longer have the desires to make those
mistaked again. And he talked about how we need to let our belief and
faith in Jesus Christ and his Atonement grow into us emulating Jesus
Christ and becoming like him. It was a great talk and I recommend
reading it.
I love the Gospel and I Love this Church. It is true and brings
more happiness into our lives than anything else. I love studying the
scriptures and learning the mysteries of God. I love you all so much and
hope you have a great week. Thank you all for the support and all your
prayers.
Love Elder Jackman
