Howdy all!
It’s been a week of miracles for sure this week. Gather ’round the fire and I will divulge my tales of grandeur and adventure….
First off, I’ll start with the less active we visited this week. This is the same less active that fed us so much and sent us home with food when we first visited her. Her name is Sister Lyster. she’s 86, baptized four years ago. She hasn’t really attended church regularly for a couple of years, and Elder Boswell and I decided it was time to pay her a visit. We went in, and she seemed to have something on her mind. We were at her house for about half an hour before she told us what it was. She felt like she couldn’t be part of the church anymore. She said that ever since her baptism, she has felt she made a mistake. She missed her old life and friends, and wanted to get it back. She asked if she could “undo” her baptism, and she wouldn’t listen to our message because she is too old to remember anything we said. It was hard for me to sit and listen to all that. We told her that we would come back later in the week to finalize her removal from the records. I was a bit heart-broken. I spent the week praying for her, hoping that she would change her mind. We went over later in the week and she had pulled a complete 180. She was open and receptive to us, she told us that she wanted more time to think about it, and she wouldn’t make any decision until after Christmas. She said it would be a shame to have her name removed after all she did to become a member of the church, and she had even talked to her son (the reason she went less active in the first place), and he had told her not to. She asked if we would share a spiritual message with her, and exclaimed how the people of the branch were so good to her, and had always set a wonderful example for her, and that her life was not as hard as some of those in our branch. It was amazing, and I’m pretty sure she’ll stay!
Next up happened during the week when we went in to get our car serviced. We had a name of a former investigator in the area, so we decided that we would walk to her house. Along the way, we heard someone singing something, and all I could make out was “Mormon”. Then he yelled out to us and asked if we were Mormons. I honestly was a bit sceptical, the man seemed like he was planning on harassing us, but we did what any good missionary should do and replied we were and asked if he knew anything about the church. We talked for a bit, and we found out he was singing a song from the Book of Mormon Musical. He then invited us into his house to listen to it because both Elder Boswell and I have never heard any of it. When we went in, we started talking about the church. We had the lesson on the restoration, and it went fantastically! He said that everything we said made sense to him, and that he felt the words we were saying were from God. He was almost in tears by the end of the lesson. He said that he really wants to change, that he feels like he needs to set a better example for his daughter (about two years old, he said that having a child has changed his perspective on life), and that he wants to quit smoking and drinking. He wanted answers as to why both of his parents died in a car crash, and wants to believe that God does really love him. It went really, really well, and I couldn’t believe what happened after we were done. We’re headed back to his place this Wednesday. As it turns out, the former investigator’s house number does not exists, but I’m still glad we went looking for it.
I can’t wait to talk to you for Christmas as well! I can Skype, so I’ll probably do that. I’ll probably contact you on your Christmas morning, so be on the look out for that.
I love you all, and hope you have a fantastic week!
-Elder Shelton
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