Week 55 - Clinton, Oklahoma - July 22, 2013

Mi querida familia, The biggest news for this week would have to be that Armando passed his interview and will be getting baptized this coming Saturday! We are so excited! Estamos muy animados para el! We had a cool experience with him this week. As we were heading to an appointment, Cindy (Armando's mom) texted us and said that ARmando was super angry---cussing and throwing stuff. Normally, I think I would have texted back and asked if it would be better to come a different time. But, Cindy insisted that it was still ok. so we came by. Armando wasn't there so we started teaching Cindy and her daughter Angie. All was going well until Armando walked in. You could tell he was angry. I tried shaking his hand, but he kind of looked at it and shook his head and walked into the other room. After a while you could tell he was upset about something. He came back in and we asked if we could share a scripture with him. He sat down and we shared D+C 121 where it says "My son, peace be unto thy soul for thine afflictions shall be but a small moment." The spirit just flooded the room and you could tell the spirit was calming him down. We expressed our love for him and we talked about some of his concerns...including getting angry. We taught how it's our choice to be angry. I shared an experience with a time I was super angry (high school drama where the girl I liked started dating another guy). I couldn't get rid of those feelings of anger and jealousy on my own.... I needed the Lord. After the lesson, I gave him a big hug and we left and the spirit was felt very strongly. 30 minutes later, I get a text from Cindy saying how Armando gave her a hug after we left and said he was sorry. The Spirit can soften people's hearts. Dad thanks for what you wrote about faith being like a domino effect. When you believe in someone else, the believe in themselves. When you show your faith, others will start to show theirs. I think of Christ and how he had the upmost faith in everything he was doing and how billions are drawn to him because of his example. He paid the Atonement...the ultimate act of faith and love for all of us even though we are unworthy at times. Because he believes in all of us, we can believe in ourselves. His love motivates us to change and exercise faith. In other news, our investigator Jesus is slowly progressing as well. He came to our Bible Study on Thursday and after the lesson we had a church tour. after the tour, he opened up to us a host of concerns that we didn't know about. His main concern is how he wants to know exacltly what he's getting into before he gets baptized. He worries about committing to something and then finding out down the road there's more stuff he has to do. We explained that this church is an active church and how he will be expected to keep staying active. He accpeted it and he loves how honest and sincere we are. Honesty and openness dispels all doubt and confusion. What else? I had personal interview with President Walkenhorst on Friday. He said a lot of interesting things one of which was how you can't change other people, but you can change yourself. He applied this to member missionary work. I realized that if I wanted to see more member activity, I need to stop waiting for them to do something, but rather take initiative myself and start exercising my faith in them. Then I believe progress will follow. I am learning a lot out here about myself. This week I am going to try and focus my testimony on Jesus Christ rather than how Joseph Smith restored the true church. I think Jospeh Smith even said something about how the Atonement of Jesus Christ is the center point of our religion, everything else is simply an appendage to it. Jesucristo es el salvador del mundo. Su Expiacion nos anima a cambiar y arrepintirnos. Nuestro salvacion es tan importante, y eso es porque Jesucristo establicio una iglesia por conducto de un profeta. Le invito a encontrar por su mismo si esta mensaje no aumenta a su paz y entendimiento en su vida. Que pasa un buen semana! Tendre fotos del bautlzmo la proxima vez que les escribo. Siga adelante! Con Amor, Elder Powley