Monday, February 13, 2012

February 13, 2012 E-Mail

Things are going well.  My new companion is Elder Jensen from South Jordan.  He's a really cool guy and has been on his mission for about 18 months.  So far we seem to work really well together.  It's always a good sign when the week goes by so fast that you can't remember any of it.  Pretty much I can only remember what happened yesterday.  Ashley got confirmed.  It was really neat.  Her in-laws came, and her father in-law is the one that did the confirmation.  It was fast Sunday for us because the previous Sunday was stake conference.  Later on in the meeting Seth, her husband, got up and bore his testimony.  It was really awesome and the spirit was so strong.  So she is now a member of the church with the goal to be sealed in the temple in a year.
On Saturday we had a lesson with a girl who was baptized right before I got here.  She is young, 19, and faces a lot of the temptations and trials that people our age face. Well it seemed like she was sort of doubting some things.  She had a lot of questions to ask us.  Well the whole time I felt prompted to do a couple of things, number one was to give her a priesthood blessing, and number two was to help her understand what she does believe in.  We had a team teacher with us and he felt some of the same promptings.  So I simply asked her if she believed in God, Jesus Christ, the Book of Mormon, the Bible, and Joseph Smith.  Her response to all of those questions was yes.  She got a big smile on her face and just said wow that made me so happy.  I told her as long as she believed in those things that everything was alright and the rest would come with time.  I love when the spirit works through us to help our Heavenly Father's children.  I also gave her a blessing at the end and that helped a lot.  Things like that help me realize that God is real and that he can communicate with us.
In that same lesson, the team teacher was talking about his mission and how they would pray that people would just show up to church to be taught.  So I decided I would pray for the same thing.  And yesterday two non-members showed up to church!  One is a 9 year old in a part member family who was being taught previously.  We were able to set up an appointment with their family.  Then the other guy just came with his girlfriend.  She didn't want us to push him yesterday but she said if he comes next week that we could ask him to be taught.  It was a tender mercy from the Lord and an answer to my prayers.  And that is all that I can remember from this week.  I know that this church is true.  I'm so grateful for prayer.  I know that we can establish a relationship with our Heavenly Father through prayer.  He listens.  And he answers.  I hope you all have a great week!
Love Elder Schvaneveldt

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