Okay, out of time, but here's the run down of last week.
Our English teaching approach has been working. We've been
getting several new investigators from it. We were pretty clever with our last
"English lesson". We told this guy," Okay, we want to get a feel
for your vocabulary and ability to speak English so we're going to tell
you a story (in Spanish) and we are going to ask you questions at the end and
we want you to try to respond in English." We then proceeded to teach him
the first lesson, the Restoration and all about Joseph Smith. :) And when an English member
knocked on the door to pick us up for our dinner appointment, we invited him in
and translated his testimony. It was pretty cool.
One guy we met on the bus loves us so much that he's going to
fly us out to his wedding if we're off of our missions. He's super hilarious,
it was hard to hand him off to the English Elders. (His name is C…, maybe I
mentioned him last week)
Tuesday was a perfect day; everything went according to plan,
which is super rare in mission life. It was a great lead in to one of the
greatest days of my mission, and therefore one of the greatest days of my life.
Wednesday we got to go to the temple with Bro. Bristow and the Elders in our
zone. Columbus temple is smaller but it was the most amazing experience. The temples
are such sacred and special places. I want nothing more than just to go back.
If I could live there I would. The new movie is fantastic. One of the apostles
was one of my seminary teachers.
We had a great lesson with R… and R…. (the parents of the most
recent convert in the branch, R…). They had a hard time accepting the word of
wisdom but we had a good lesson and they are living it. The adversary really
tried to deter the spirit from us before entering their home and having such a
great lesson. We were riding with a member to their home when a car wheeled
through the intersection and parked sideways so as to nearly block our
line of cars. A man then leapt from the car screaming, "Give me my
phone!" He ran to the van behind us and jumped half way into the passenger
door. The van drove down the road with the guy’s legs hanging out of the car.
We drove away and didn't see how it ended. Then after we parked the car and
were walking to the door guess what happened? A bird dropped me a present from
the sky and it landed right on my suit pants. So I'll be visiting the dry
cleaners pretty soon.
Well there isn't time but I just have to tell you we just met
this most incredible guy. His name is R… and he has a little boy that's 3 years
old. We had such a powerful first lesson with him. At the end of the lesson we
had him pray and after the prayer we didn't say anything. We just stayed
kneeling in silence and let the spirit soak the room. After a minute he lifted
his head with watery eyes. Such a cool experience. As we left his home the member
that was with us said, "He's a future elder's quorum president." He's
got such great potential and he's so ready to receive the gospel. He
doesn't have any major word of wisdom problems and he's divorced so no chastity
problems. And he came to church! At church I gave another talk. I felt
like it must be similar to what my homecoming talk will feel like because I
already knew the streets and all the familiar faces.
Well I love you all tons. Have a great week!
Elder
Graf
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| Elder Graf, Bro. Bristow, Elder Taylor at the Columbus Temple |
