This week has been super crazy

Hey family-

This week has been super crazy, I'll try to give you a good greatest hits though.

Most exciting new investigator ever is Corey, our Jehovah's Witness we're teaching. He's awesome, he stopped and talked to us out of curiosity and pity because he did a lot of missionary work as a kid. He hasn't been active in his church for years and feels too much guilt to go back, but he's been working towards that for a while now. We asked him is he could ask God any one question what would he ask and he said he's ask if his church was actually the right path. Jolly good question Corey! So we talked to him about how he can get rid of guilt and shame and how to find out what is true through prayer. Our first actual lesson was a little crazy- turns out been an inactive JDub does not in any way diminish your Bible knowledge, he could quote scripture like a beast- but we're going to teach him and his wife this week about the Restoration and we're really excited.

Laverne came to church this week for the first time. Testimony meeting is ALWAYS a good first Sunday in this branch, although there was a lot of talk about Joseph Smith which is Laverne's big concern. I guess in a way it's good because after church he opened up a lot about what he was and wasn't willing to do to find out if Joseph Smith was a prophet, but it was also a good reminder that we can't get more caught up in the means God uses to do his work than we do the actual work itself. Joseph Smith isn't important; it's the fact that God speaks to us still and restored his church to Earth that's important. Our focus needs to always be on the Savior and how to access His Atonement, not on the actual church that exists just to help us to do so.

John, one of my former investigators, came to church again as well! He loves testimony meeting so he actually comes almost every first Sunday, but afterwards he was talking to us and said he wanted a Doctrine and Covenants because he had a lot of concerns about Joseph Smith and a member had said reading the Doctrine and Covenants helped you know him better and see his role as a prophet. So we ended up setting up an appointment with him this week to teach him about the restoration and again, so I'm pretty excited about that. We knew when we stopped seeing him it would be a temporary drop, but I didn't think I would be able to teach him again.

We've been going out a lot recently with some return sister missionaries in the ward, which has been really fun. I love seeing how people from different missions worked. Best was one who served in Salt Lake City, who gave me tips on how to be useful RM in Utah since there's a billion and so if you just ask the missionaries to take you teaching you may or may not get used. Her best advice was what I knew anyways but reaffirmed I need to make a focus: actually have someone for the missionaries to teach. Basically the last year has just been training on how I need to actually do member missionary work when I get home.

Well, hope you feel better this week Mom! Good luck with the packing and sorting. Hope you don't have quite as much excitement this week! Love you!