Contacting and the Work of Miracles

This week was full of a lot of zone leaderie stuff. Lots of exchanges and lots of meetings, but a lot of really cool moments that I have loved being involved in. It was a cool week. I have really been trying to live in the moment and enjoy Seaside and the beauty that I am a part of. 

Spiritual: This week we have realized that our potential investigator list is getting a little outdated so we took the initiative to go out and find some more people to teach. I love love love contacting. It’s so much fun to go up to someone strange and start up a conversation with them that could change their lives. Most of the time nothing truly exciting happens. We share a quick blurb of testimony, give them an invitation, make them laugh and depart with no huge leads or new people to teach. When we do find someone however who is prepared, there is a totally different feeling about it. We were walking down the street to a potential investigators home when we noticed a car with two people inside it parked in front of us. We walked up and noticed their door was partially open. Being my dorky missionary self, we struck up a conversation with these folks in their car. After a few moments of conversation, the woman driving the car said she had to go and drove off. The man, however, got out and continued to talk to us. It was a very interesting spirit that was there. He said we could come over to his house and continue to teach him the next day. We said okay and after getting his information he walked away. The next day we went over to his house and he greeted us warmly. We sat down and started teaching him an in depth lesson about the restoration of the gospel. He really opened up to us by telling us all about his abusive father and about how his faith in Christ had helped him get through some hard time. This was a man about six feet tall and stocky, large white beard around 65 wearing shorts and no shirt. It was a powerful spirit that was around him though and at the end of the lesson he was in tears and had committed to be baptized at the end of July. It goes to show ya that you never know who is prepared. I love this gospel and I love this work that I am engaged in. This is fantastic. I love the Lord and I am so happy to serve him. Treat everyone with kindness. It doesn't matter if they are not wearing a shirt. The Lord loves them and we need to as well. 

Spiritual #2: We also went over to teach Dylan, our 17 year old wrestling stud of an investigator this week. We needed a member to come with us so we tried a few people and finally we got a Brother Leue to come with us. We went over and we were planning on teaching him the Law of Chastity, but when we got there, there was not the right spirit for that. The first thing he said to us was "I have a girlfriend so I can’t come to church." Oh dear. Why does that mean you can’t come to church? She wants me to come to her church. Okay. We can work with that. We started talking about how we can pray to know what church was true. We asked Brother Leue how he found out that the Church was true. He said that he had the EXACT same experience that Dylan is going through now. It was so cool! He shared a story about how he was dating a girl that went to another church and how he had to pray to know. It is so cool how the Lord will put these people together. It’s amazing because this was the first time his mom listened in and liked what she was hearing and we are currently teaching her. 

Where I am at: Aside from the plethora of exchanges and a little bit of the flu residing with Elder Lopez, the work is not stopping. It’s amazing to see how things are going here. We went to Point Lobos (now one of the 20 Amazing places my kids have to see before I die) last week and are going back again this week with the whole zone. This work is great. No baptisms yet, but there are a lot of good things happening. I love you all!

Ammon did not include a funny experience this week but when I asked him if the shorts I sent him fit he said that he did not know but was glad to get them because he ripped his pants this morning watering his neighbor's plants. This is the accompanying photo. (I do not know if he climbed the fence out of necessity or because he is Ammon.)

I also asked him if he has had the flu and how he has avoided getting sick. He thinks it is all the oranges.