Letter #86
April 20, 2015
Area: Baytown
Companion: Knudsen
It sounds like your week was great except for the crazy weather, but we
had crazy weather out here too. It was raining most of the week, then
yesterday was sunny and nice outside until about 7:10pm, suddenly some
menacingly dark clouds started coming in. By 7:30 the clouds covered
half of the sky and it was a lot darker than it had been only minutes
before. We hadn't eaten dinner, so we decided that we didn't really like
the look of the skies and we were just going to go in for dinner. We
checked the phone when we got home and saw that we had a text that we
missed, it said that there was a tornado warning and everyone should get
inside. It said that it had been seen, I will be sending my SD card
home soon, and I took a few videos and a bunch of pictures of it.
Other than that, this week went really well, we were having the
constant need to find more people though. We saw much success as we went
contacting, we actually were able to teach 13 new people, but sadly, a
couple had to be passed on to the English Elders, one was going out of
town for 1-2 months to visit his father, and three decided they didn't
want to hear any more. Regardless, we still were able to find 7 new
investigators, and the majority seem like they will begin to progress
very soon. With the call of our new Branch Mission Leader we have seen
more help from the members than I have ever seen. We were able to bring
some members out, but sadly some of the lessons didn't work out so we
had to try some other people. We ended up going over to visit a
less-active family with Hermano Valadez, the Branch Mission Leader, and
we actually caught them at home and found out more of why they don't
come to church. We are super excited for where this area seems to be
going! It is also really amazing to know that Matthew, one of the
referrals given to the English Elders, went to church Sunday. We found
him on Saturday, and now he will be getting baptized on May 3rd along
with Vansha G, a person who contacted us about 2 weeks ago during the
Spoke'n Pedal. They both show extreme desire to grow closer to God and
to act upon the message, I can't wait to see that miracle happen!
The district has been doing well, the Hermanas recently had to
drop a lot of their investigators, but that gave them more time to find
those who are really prepared. We had a really inspired District Meeting
that I honestly didn't know exactly what to do until we went to the
Temple on Thursday and I prayed in the Celestial Room. The meeting was
really focused on what we can do to bring the Spirit into the lessons
more and to leave better commitments to be able to allow the
investigators to feel that same spirit that we brought. We all realized
we just needed to go back to the basics and back to the days of
training, when we didn't know what to say or how to say it, when we
stuck more to the guidelines and teachings in Preach My Gospel because
it was all we knew. We were able to role play using the How to Begin
Teaching points and we each applied it to our real teaching and I have
felt the spirit more as we teach.
I love you guys,
Elder Stanley Scott Dye
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