March 23, 2015

Well I wanna thank everyone for all the birthday wishes. I didn't do too much for my birthday. Really the only thing that I did was we had the senior couple, the McEwens over for lunch because they are leaving tomorrow and we wanted to thank them for everything they have done for us. They really are some of the most Christlike people I have ever met. So we invited them over for our traditional sunday pizza and made them pizza and salad and then elder van leuven made me brownies for my birthday. It was quite the feast!! We made 6 pizzas! Maybe a little bit too much haha. The miracle of yesterday though was that we had 3 full families at church. That is a huge improvement considering we started from almost nothing at the beginning of the transfer! Our first sunday we only had 1 investigator at church. We had 8 people yesterday! That is nothing less than a miracle wrought by the hand of the Lord.

A funny story that happened this week. Well honestly we had a pretty rough week... We got rejected a lot and Satan's biggest lie that he is telling people is that all churches are the same. We all praise the same God and its just a matter of preference where you want to go. Ugh... Super frustrating. Well in a lesson when we were teaching a new family, they had already heard a bit about our church and the husband asked if Joseph Smith was the same guy that wrote the Book of Mormon and so we explained that he didn't write it but that he translated it from a language of old to english so that we could enjoy its teachings today and to show that he was a true prophet of God. And the wife answers "Oh i get it, Mormon is an old american language..."hahahahaha. Not quite. So we had to explain again that mormon isn't a language and that he was just one of the prophets hahaha. So amidst all the frustration of trying to help people see that churches aren't the same, there was that one funny experience haha. But really, we got told this week that our church and their church is exactly the same. Not one thing is different. The only difference is that we are from different religions.... and the person was serious!!! I couldn't quite wrap my mind around that one. 

But our week was good. This week we have plans for some new finding activities! We are excited and we hope that it works out well! I attached pictures of our lunch with the McEwens. 

I actually sang another duet yesterday at church. We sang, "this is my father's world". lets just say i hadn't been so nervous in such a long time. but it went really well. Today, we are going to go to a cultural show! So that should be fun! I am really excited! Ok two things really quickly.

I started a new Book of Mormon challenge to finish the B.O.M. before I come home... well i started it like 3 weeks ago. But in it, I highlight in different colors 1. every reference to christs name in any form 2.his words 3. his attributes and 4. the doctrines and principles taught by the Book of Mormon. I am just getting to the middle of 2 nephi and I have never learned so much!! Its incredible what you can learn by studying a little bit harder!!! I have learned so many new things in this that i never knew before!!! Its been awesome!

Also, we have a family that started the marriage process yesterday so their date is set for april 25th!!! we are excited! I love you all and hope you have a great week!!!

Love,

Elder Lynn