Sunday, October 19, 2014

the opportunity to work with members

Letter #56
Sept. 22, 2014
Area: Broadway- Central 2
Companion: Heath

Week 57...I have been out 57 weeks? I hit 13 months 2 days ago. I can't believe time goes that fast when you don't think about it....

This week has been great for us, we have had the opportunity to work with members quite a bit and we got referrals out of it! I love getting member referrals because they already have the member support and they have friends in the church, and they have someone to motivate them along the way. We were able to get a total of 4 member referrals, and we look forward to working with them as well as the people we already have.

We started teaching another family that already knows members and has actually been to church a few times. We had a very spiritual lesson with them on Thursday, and we look forward to meeting with them tomorrow (Tuesday).  With this family, on Thursday, we barely missed having the son/brother there, so we have another potential investigator in that family. We also taught our investigator, Elvia, again and had another spiritually edifying lesson with her. She really enjoys what we teach and willingly accepted the baptismal invitation as she came to understand the need of authority. 

We have also had the opportunity to find many more less-actives, and we have had the opportunity to start working with them. One family that we work with, the Rivera family, was really helped by our efforts.  The mother and 2 daughters came to church on Sunday, but sadly the husband is still working on fixing his testimony to make him want to return. We are making plans to bring our ward mission leader to visit with him one of the days this week.
From the streets of Houston, Texas

The happy smiles of Elder Dye and Elder Heath
I have been having a great time with Elder Heath here.  Though, I feel like I am more stressed because I know there are so many things that I need to do and that I should be doing, but there just isn't enough time to do it all. I have recently reviewed some goals I have and I made the goal to finish the whole standard works before the end of my mission because I know the scriptures bring peace, and I have felt like I don't know enough, which adds to my stress. As I have been reading/studying over the last few days, I have felt the stress leave and it is replaced by the peace and knowledge of my Savior, Jesus Christ, and a deeper understanding of His teachings. 

This week we had exchanges, which always adds a little change to the week. And what made it better is that we had nothing set up for that whole day, so we did a lot of contacting. We ended up going to the park and trying to find people there, but sadly there wasn't a ton of people there, so we locked up our bikes and went around walking. We got to the other side of the park, and saw a bunch of geese and ducks, so I took some pictures. Then we noticed that one looked like it had an extra head, so we asked this man about it. He wasn't quite sure, but we just started a conversation, in which we found out that he is a member of the church, but hasn't gone for about 12 years... We got his information, and he went on his way. Then we were walking back and saw a kid walking over to the soccer field with his ball in hand, so we asked if we could play. We ended up playing a little with him, then other kids came up and we got into a game that lasted about 40 minutes, and during the game, we were talking with the kids and I became like best friends with a little 8 year old girl. They were all awesome, and after playing, we went over and talked with their parents, and they had seen us playing with the kids, but sadly that didn't soften their hearts enough to listen to the message, but they knew that we were nice/good people.

I love you,
Elder Stanley Scott Dye

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