Week 57

Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 9:40 AM

Hey family and friends,

So this past week was really good in a lot of ways.  I picked up my new companion on Tuesday.  His name is Elder Nelson and he's from Meridian, ID.  He's a star and is doing great so far.  He really has a desire to learn and is ready to work hard.  He was only in the MTC 12 days...and guess what...he is 2 days older than Christopher...that was weird.  When he told me that I was like, wait a second...it's like I'm training my little brother...anyways...weird stuff.

Anyways, so the day after transfers, we went on exchange, which means that can I go with one of the Elders in another area for training purposes.  Well, seeing as how Elder Nelson had been out a grand total of 1/2 days, I figured I wouldn't make him take over the area, so he went to Zebulon his first day.  The other days went pretty well, but we were ridiculously busy, but didn't have the opportunity to get out there on the bikes and such. 

So, semi funny story...we were at our investigators house for a lesson we had set up the night previous and after several knocks a couple of kids came to the door, informing us that the investigators weren't home...we were briefly talking with these kids when one of them decided to walk up next to me and promptly tooted on my leg, followed by giggling hysterically.  He was probably 6 or 7.  We were like, "what?!?!?!"  haha...funny though.

On a more spiritual note, the baptism on Saturday was ridiculously powerful.  Following a lesson on Wednesday and some follow up discussion with our Ward Mission Leader on Thursday, we were trying to work out what we wanted to do for the time when they would be changing back into regular clothes.  We wanted it to be powerful because we had been informed that there would be several less active and non member individuals there on top of some of our investigators...so, Saturday morning rolls around and due to lack of communication, we don't really have anything decided upon.  After talking with our Ward Mission Leader and the father we started to put our brains in gear.  We wanted to show a visual thing but didn't have a lot of time to search for one.  We had about an hour to spare, so we were going to go down to the library and search some videos on mormon.org.   Then, I remembered that I had this DVD of mormon messages given me by a member that lives up in Kinston that does a lot for the whole mission in terms of missionary work. 

We sifted through a couple and then watched this one by Pres. Eyring for some reason or other called Choose this day.  Watch it.  When we watched it, Elder Nelson and myself, we both felt the spirit very strongly and knew that that was a strong possibility.  We still had intentions of going to the library to check out some other things...but then we realized that we just need to do it and show that video that we felt so strongly about.  Long story short, we did.  and yes, it was powerful.  When the video ended, we went up to the front to push the tv out of the way and stuff and we were walking back to our seats, but it just didn't feel right to just walk away after that video, so we both bore our testimonies about the decision that Susan just made to choose this day and other truths.  It was amazing.  Then right before the closing prayer, Susan jumped up to say a few words impromptu.  She definitely wasn't intending on doing that; her step mom had actually mentioned earlier to me that there was no way she would get up to bear her testimony.  It was amazing as well and touched a lot of people.  One way that we knew that the video had so much power was the fact that afterwards, 2 people approached us and asked us about the video saying that they knew some people in their home wards that could really use that video.  It was a huge testimony builder for me to see how important it is to follow even the smallest of spiritual promptings because this one small decision of ours to share a video at a baptism that we had seen on a little 7 in. screen in an apartment in little ol' Wake Forest may end up sending ripples of influence across the state and perhaps the world.  We never know the impact we can have...and we may never realize it impacted anyone until many years from now.  The important thing is to simply trust that His ways are higher than ours.

Life is really good though.  I still can't believe July is here and gone.  Thanks for being my family.  And I mentioned to DJ that I'm so grateful that we are all unified and united in the gospel.  I’m so grateful that we all are converted to our Savior Jesus Christ.  The fact that you, mom and dad, were able to somehow facilitate that is absolutely amazing.  Definitely a feat worth appreciating.  Not that we don't all have struggles or not that we never had our low periods, but we never once have completely turned our back on the Savior.  I love this gospel.  I love His plan.  May we forever be one, as a family within God's family. :)

Love so much,

Elder Patty