We took an email break to go eat cake with one of our members,
but now I'm back! So yeah, this week was a good one.
We taught M… and C… more about the Restoration and how we now
have a modern day prophet, President Thomas S. Monson! They continue to be
champions. They are planning their wedding for the first day of March, and the
baptism the weekend after. We've been bringing M… to come out and
teach with us now. He's great; he's a very bold teacher.
We finally did exchanges with the other elders of my district.
Usually you do a 24-hour companion exchange at least once a transfer, but
because we're Spanish elders, no one can really do exchanges with us. But we
finally did an exchange with Elder Shifler and Elder Carranza, the other
Spanish elders. I let Elder Gibb run the area for the day and he did a great
job. I went to Elder Carranza's area and we had a fun day that started with a
6:00 A.M. fire alarm that triggered because the roof was flooding. Turns out
the apartment above us had a water heater explode. With no maintenance crew
available that early we did the best we could to catch water with popcorn
bowls and trashcans. Eventually the ceiling in the living room fell down.
(Furthermore, bad snowy weather delayed the arrival of carpet and repair
crews so the other elders ended up staying at our apartment for another
few days.) But we went on to have a good day with a couple powerful
lessons. We had a really neat experience with a young single
mom named I…. When we walked into her house I knew that I had
recognized her from somewhere. Turns out she was at the house of one
of our less actives when we had taught them a few months ago. We
began to teach her about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, just a simple lesson
about their incredible and individual love for us. The spirit was
definitely present and she opened up to us. In tears she expressed how she had
felt extremely alone in her life. She had been so poor at times that she had
looked for people to take care of her two young daughters because
they didn't have anything to eat. She accepted the invitation to come
to church and she came!
Thursday was a really neat experience as well. We prayed to find
a family that day. And at about 8pm at night we were blessed to find a
family from Guatemala! We find them because we were on the way to see a
potential when we felt like knocking the apartment door next to them,
and... Whoala! New family! I've realized that that's sometimes how revelation
works - Heavenly Father will give us an idea, and as we follow it, we may
discover that a new opportunity is made available, one that could only be
recognized as we were pursuing the original idea. So in life, don't just
move from point A to point B, because the spirit may be waiting to
bless us with a prompting in between! President Monson has said,
"Never deny a generous thought." So anything that prompts you to do
anything good for someone else, do it! (Moroni 7:12-16) You never know the
blessings that Heavenly Father has for you unless you are exactly obedient to
the spirit!
Sunday was basically a day of Miracles. WE COMPLETELY FILLED THE
RELIEF SOCIETY ROOM! WAHOO! So yeah, we're going to have to move our
sacrament meetings to the chapel pretty soon because this branch is about to
explode. We had over 60 people at church. And the best part is that 9 of them
were investigators, and Elder Carranza is baptizing 2 of them next week. We had
investigators giving other investigators rides to church; Investigators
teaching other investigators about the church and showing them where their classes
are. It's just fantastic. One of the brothers was advanced to the Melchizedek
priesthood, and for pete's sake another one even proposed to one of
the sisters after church. They'll be married soon, right along side with M…
and C…. And as soon as we get E…'s papers filled out she can get married
to! So lots of good things are happening.
Thank you for all your letters and prayers! Love you
tons!
Elder
Graf
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| Here's the ceiling!.... on the floor. We were actually out of the apartment when it fell. So it was a fun surprise to swing the door open and see this. |
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| We had put the coach on the chairs because it was soaking up all the water from the swampy carpet. |
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| Elder Carranza in the snow. |
