Hey all,
I'm glad to hear you all are doing so well! It seems like you go skiing every week! When I get off my mission, hopefully we can all go skiing with the Uhe's at their place they go to every year in Deer Valley! That would be the day! That's cool BYU has a shot at winning the NIT this year. Thanks for not telling me about march madness. Really so I don't get distracted. The provo temple dedication seems like it was wayyyyy cool! That whole Beauty for Ashes scripture theme about it was cool to me, and also it being on Palm Sunday.
We missed meeting with the Uhes since they've been in Chicago for Leisel's swim competition which she took 7th place out of many elite swimmers her age or older. Have I mentioned before that Brycen should marry her someday? haha. It seemed like we hadn't seen them forever even though it was only 10 days since the confirmation. We had a super long lesson with them about the Restoration. It's hard to make our lessons short with them since we love them so much! But we do need to be better at that because we informed yesterday that apparently our Bishop's wife who came to sit in on the lesson got a little annoyed we were there too long. The lesson was good though and they always ask really good questions like "what's the difference between a prophet, seer, and revelator?" also they told us on their trip they felt uncomfortable having to swim on Sundays. Since yesterday though, they won't have any more competitions on Sunday for a while. Towards the end of the lesson I felt impressed to kind of warn them that if they didn't read the Book of Mormon diligently they would eventually fall. I was pretty forthright with them, and I am not too worried about them. They even read on their trip. We challenged them to read the whole book of mormon by the end of the year! Afterwards we continued to talk at the doorstep. It's hard to want to leave. Leisel, Roger, and Ingrid asked me how long I will be in Springfield and they were kind of sad that I told them it would probably only be 4-10 weeks. it felt good to be cared about. That will be tough to leave them, but I am so grateful Heavenly Father has allowed me to be in their life!
Oh and we heard from people that the tornado touched down a couple blocks away from our apartment, except there wasn't any damage. Apparently it wasn't strong enough to do any damage. But i'll send you cool pictures that a member sent to my email. The lightning storms are awesome in the midwest! The skies are huge.
We had a lot of good potentials cancel on us this week. We weren't able to meet with any of our investigators --Filip (phil-eep), and Charles. We did get to talk to the Israelite family but weren't able to set a return appointmet yet. They are a family of 6 and seem really nice.
In other news, we finished teaching the returning member lessons with Brother Burshears and he is planning on going to the temple. He set up an appointment with the Bishop to get a temple reccomend.!
Another cool thing happened while we were getting dinner at Chick-fil-a. We were talking to this really buff black guy named Kevin while waiting for our lemon freezees. He asked us how long we were going to be in springfield, and then he showed us some video highlights of his semi pro basketball team. We gave him our card, then he left, but with a card that I accidentally didn't have our number on it, so he came back in and asked us if he could have one with our number on it. He then said he wanted to invited us over for dinner sometime with he and his girlfriend. He knows about the church and missionaries apparently. It was really an unusual experience to be invited by a stranger to dinner. He showed me his Jesus tatoo. Hopefully he is in our area book because we didn't get his number. darn.
Saturday, we had the chance to meet a kid named Tommy, a 15 year old, who doesn't go to church very often at all. He'd just rather sleep. Elder Petersen says that he's sleeping his life away. He is a really nice kid though with a cool blonde mullet. He lives with his grandma who is pretty active and it's just the two of them so he's a little lonely. We've actually been trying to meet with him for a while. His grandmother was really grateful that he talked to us and she even started to weep a little. That experience made me pretty happy. We are going to meet with him more often hopefully.
Sunday, we had a cool experience. We were driving to a less active's home, and I had an impression which sounded like in my head "maybe you should go see Bro. Wheeler since he came to church today." So we turned around to go the completely opposite direction to see him late at night at about 8:45. I wasn't really sure if this was a prompting or not, but 'nevertheless we went forth" hoping it was. Brother Wheeler welcomed us in. Like I said he came to church yesterday, and it was for the first time in a long while. He's a nice guy. He is from Kentucky and growing up he liked to hunt squirrels and eat them. He also knows a little bit of Hebrew which you would appreciate, mother. We shared him the #hallelujah video and asked him what the atonement meant to him. He said that he wasn't really sure what it meant to him anymore. I was pretty surprised at the response and didn't really know what to say to that. So Elder Peterson talked for a while and sadi some really good things that were powerful and authoritative. Brother Wheeler said that he believe everything in the church is true, but just had hard time believing in loving your enemies, and used some pretty harsh words. Our of nowhere, I had an impression to turn to the scripture that Paul talks about his "thorn in the flesh" in 2 Cor 12. I wasn't really sure where it was but I found it through cross reference in Ether 12. I shared the passage with him and then bore testimony about how with god all things are possible, and then used logic to explain that if he believes in everything else about the gospel is true, then that would have to mean that God would have to allow us a way to love our enemies. We wouldn't say something impossible to do. . We then invited him to pray about it and seek the Lord "that it might depart from him." (2 cor 12). We kind of put him in a stupor and he thanked us for stopping and then we left rather quickly. Afterwards i turned to Elder Peterson and said "that was so cool!" and he was like "why?" I was just very excited that the spirit led us to his home and then prompted me to share that scripture because it was exactly what he needed to hear. The spirit is so cool if we just listen and follow, nothing doubting, even if we don't know beforehand if it's the spirit or not.
Well I love you all.
I've got to go right now on lunch break.
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