79th Week in Spokane

What an amazing week! I was able to get permission to go on Saturday to the temple with Elder Moleni and Elder Aslanian to be with Will and Evelynn Thornton as they went through the temple together and get sealed for time and all eternity. It was so awesome! I'm so happy for them, they both looked so good and so happy! It was a really neat blessing to be able to be there with all of them. That was definitely the highlight of the week. but there are some others too. I told you last week about the man that I taught a few times in Bonners Ferry, whose grand daughter lives here in the Sunnyside ward. On Friday we had zone conference and that was really good, we talked about how to help our investigators receive revelation and also how to help them make and keep commitments in preparation for them to make and keep covenants with the Lord. It was good. However, we accidentally double booked our dinner appointments that night. So we drove straight from zone conference to our first dinner appointment with the man that I taught in Bonners at his grand daughter's house. So we ate dinner there and taught a short lesson about coming to church and invited him to come, which he said he would. but then he didn't. Anyways, we had to rush off to go to our next dinner appointment with another member in the ward, the Lopers, who have been working with their friends, another couple, the Hunts. They have had numerous religious discussions with each other over dinner so they invited us to tag along. The Hunts are Seventh Day Adventists. Both converted to it fairly recently. The wife had been reading in the Book of Mormon but stopped because it talks about the spirit world, which the Adventists don't believe in. And so she came to the dinner with a packet of six or seven pages full of scriptures to prove her view of death. Looking at it in the way that she was, it all made very good sense. However, there are a few instances in the bible which talk about the spirit world, which we pointed out. To which she responded, “well here's fifty verses to your three or four”, all of which were from the bible (ours included). We tried to explain to them that in light of the way that we view it, all those fifty verses point to how we believe, and if Joe Schmoe, the nondenominational christian pastor down the street were to be here then he would use the same scriptures to argue his point of view. So what does this all mean?? It means we need a second witness.. which just so happens to be the Book of Mormon! So we tried to get that across but with no luck, she kept saying show me in the bible, show me in the bible, if its in there I'll believe. So I've been doing a lot of studying since then about the subject and have found some pretty defining evidence in the bible that I hadn't thought of before. Now just to be clear, we know that Satan is the author of contention, so this was not a bashing session, it was very civilized and the spirit was there, they are very good people seeking the truth, and if proving to them about this spirit world thing out of the bible is what we have to do to remove the stumbling block that is keeping them from continuing to read in the Book of Mormon, then that's exactly what we'll do because there is so much power in reading from the Book of Mormon, its amazing! I've got one more highlight to share with you from this week, and this is definitely a good one! At the beginning of February, I fasted that Elder Tamblyn and I would be able to have a baptism together. That night, we put Tiffany Redford on date to be baptized. then three days later, she fell off date, but we taught Ed Brown and put him on date to be baptized, and we were able to be together when he was baptized, so the Lord answered my fasting and prayers. Well, I decided to fast for the same thing this time, that Elder Van Dyke and I would be able to have a baptism together. And then during church we had a member come up to us and say that his son would like to take the missionary lessons again and be baptized. So that night we went and taught Sam Palmer. He is 14. He has a desire to make changes in his life and be baptized, and so we put him on date to be baptized on April 16th which is the last Saturday of this transfer. The Lord is very much aware of us and He hears and answers our prayers and our fasts. I love you!