Dear Family and Friends,
Happy Thanksgiving! I will confess I was a little homesick on Thursday. I miss the cousins and grandparents and siblings that usually surround the dinner table, but instead I was in good company. We had a thanksgiving lunch at the Parker's home. All of their kids were older than us, but Bro. Parker and his son served in Brazil, so it was cool to visit with them.
Also, they live on a hill right next to the golf course here in Spanish Fork, so to work off some of the calories we ate, we drove golf balls off of their back porch. Golf is tough, but for the first time, I was kind of getting the hang of it. It was so relaxing and we had prettiest view up there.
Later we had Thanksgiving "Dinner" at one of our Investigator's homes. He lives in the basement apartment of some members, so together we all ate a very classy thanksgiving dinner and our investigator, Brian Nicely, was sick with a sinus infection, so we gave him a blessing and talked about how far along he is in he Book of Mormon. (Around chapter 12 of 1st Nephi). It's awesome to see him progressing, he was a little homesick too because it was his first Thanksgiving away from his family in Kentucky.
Also, this week Spanish Fork wasted no time and had their Christmas, "Festival of Lights", parade the day after Thanksgiving. I find it interesting that compared to Christmas, Thanksgiving is never over-celebrated. Black Fridaystarts Thursday night here. It's kind of sad how it engulfs thanksgiving and people go from expressing their gratitude to spoiling themselves with a new TV or video game console. A anyways, I was in a parade! All of the missionaries from my district walked together and waved to people along side the street and shook people's hands and wished them merry Christmas. I'm pretty sure that the people alongside the street cheered for us more than the fireworks or the floats. Only in Utah haha...
This weekend we had two baptisms and two confirmations. One was for Janet Davis. A woman who has been investigating the church since 1995 (a year after I was born!) and been through 15 sets of different missionaries, but for some reason, the first time since I had moved to this new area, we knocked on her door and she told us how that she finally quit smoking and drinking coffee and she was ready to be baptized. This was a miracle. She has been smoking for 34 years and the day that I get to meet her, she hasn't smoked for a week. We later learned that she was using the power of the Atonement and Repentance to change and finally quit. She has tried dozens of times to quit, but she never once called upon the power of the Atonement and relied on the Lord's strength to help her overcome her addiction. She said "this time, it was easy".
The other baptism was for Jose Solis, a great man who had trouble committing to be baptized for many years. His wife and kids are active and baptized, but he was afraid of commitment and always put off the blessings that he could be receiving. On my first lesson with him, I challenged him to be baptized and he said "I will". Those are the most exciting words to hear after a baptismal commitment. Since that night, Jose has progressed so much and he even handed off the torch to one of his co-workers and told him that he would be next. That same coworker has a lesson scheduled with the Spanish Elders and he also comes from an active family. Jose wants to be his fellow-shipper.
Okay, this e-mail is crazy long haha. But I haven't been able to be on Facebook this week because the FHC was closed all week and my iPad is experiencing technical difficulties.
Have an awesome week everyone! Happy Holidays! Snow is coming tomorrow!
I love you all.
-Elder Sellers
No comments:
Post a Comment