Week 64 - Clinton, Oklahoma - Sept 23, 2013

Mi querida familia, FELIZTACIONES A MI HERMANA ALEJANDRA! I'm so excited for Alex to to serve a mission! She is so well prepared and she will touch the lives of everyone down in Ecuador. This week has been indescribable. The Lord has shown me and taught me many things that I didn't quite comprehend. For example no matter how depressed or down you might get, God will always make tomorrow better. I know it sounds cliche, but this week we saw the blessings of following a prompting. So I mentioned in the past few weeks that we've been prompted to try some of the wealthier areas. Let me tell you about Tuesday Night (Tuesday the 17th for all you Psyche fans:) I had a rough night. Elder Tanner took the rejection really well, but for some reason it was hard for me. First, we ran into a man who completely bashed our beliefs. It was in a polite respectful manner, but he made fun of what we believe. He mentioned three things 1. We can't become like God 2. WE don't believe in grace. 3. the Book of Mormon is false. I'm so glad I had a testimony for all three of those concerns. We can become like God, we do believe in grace, and the book of Mormon is true. Thankfully, my companion and I had just 20 minutes earlier talked about how we would respond to someone who tried to bible bash. We handled it well, we didn't argue, try to prove our point we just bore testimony and invited him to hear more. We'll see what happens. Then we went to perhaps the wealthiest neighborhood in all of clinton and we knocked doors. 8 doors, 0 return appointments. And most of them didn't even let us explain who we were. It was hard for me because for most of my mission I'd spent more time in the poorer areas. It's 20 times more intimidating to knock doors that stand at the end of long driveway, neatly decorated and furnished. Even though we didn't see any success, we were confident that we were following a prompting from the Holy Ghost. That evening, I felt attacked by feelings of doubt and discouragement. I got frustrated with myself. Why am I doubting? Why am I discouraged? I've been on my mission this long I shouldn't be doubting. I've learned that you've got to turn to the Lord when these feelings of doubt start coming at you...because they are from Satan. So I prayed. I went into a separate room from my companion and I prayed aloud to myself...and let me tell you there is difference between praying aloud and praying in your head. Once in while, we should all take time to pray aloud to our Heavenly Father, it feels more personal and intimate. I felt his peace envelope me. Then I started studying the scriptures the next morning, and then we visited a potencial investigator (Josh) and taught him the first lesson...and he accepted a baptismal date. AFter that appointment, whatever feelings of doubt I had before vanished. It seemed laughable that I had doubted. This gospel is so true! The message of the resotration is true. We CAN become like God. We found many more people to teach in the following days, and then miraculously many of our investigators came to church yesterday! The Spirit of God is touching the hearts of Western Oklahoma. It's incredible to see that the Lord is in control. He seems to just non nonchalantly place people in our path when we jsut trust in our feelings and be obedient. I am so grateful for the mission. If anyone who reads this is thinking about going on a mission, they should go. This is the greatest experience of my life and I am growing closer to Heavenly Father because of it. I'm grateful for my companion Elder Tanner, thorughout our hard evening on Tuesday, he stayed strong and was a great friend to me. I could open up to him. It's so great to have a companion you can open up to. There have been so many more miracles I can't explain them all. Siga adelante! Placentero nos es trabajar en la vina del gran rey Jesus! con Amor, Elder Powley