week that I'll talk about a little later in my email. It started out
on Wednesday when we had a lesson with one of our new investigators.
In our first lesson with him we invited him to be baptized and he said
he would once he came to know that it is true. So we taught him the
second lesson on Wednesday and we asked him if he would prepare
himself to be baptized on March 12 and he said he would! It was
awesome and the spirit was really strong. He also came to stake
conference with us yesterday and loved it! He said he wants to come
back next week for the normal sacrament meeting. I'm super excited to
keep working with him!
On Thursday, our mission had a goal to have every companionship had
out a copy of the Book of Mormon and then report it to the zone
leaders how many people handed out Copies and how many copies were
handed out. So elder Merrill and I decided to fill my backpack with
copies of the Book of Mormon and head over to Geroge Mason University
which is in our ward boundaries and see how many we could hand out. We
brought 10 copies with us thinking that we could only hand out 2 or 3
but as we got going I swear we couldn't hold on to them long enough.
Yes, there were some people who rejected it but most of the kids were
super interested in what we had to say. We ended up handing all 10 of
the copies by 8pm. We still had an hour of proselyting left and we had
no materials because we had handed them all out. I wish we would have
brought more to give to people. I'm so glad we were able to hand them
all out and bear our testimonies with each one. We decided to split up
in the quad area (don't worry, we were still within sight and sound)
and we decided we were going to talk to ask many people as we possibly
could. We probably talked to 35 people that night. It was such an
amazing experience to be able to share the love of the gospel with
people my age!
So I want to tell you about this experience that happened on Friday.
So Friday is usually the day we do our weekly planning session which
can take anywhere from 1-3 hours. And so in the morning after studies
we decided to pick up our apartment because we have inspections
tomorrow and the we would just eat lunch and do our weekly planning.
Well, weekly planning rolls around at about 1pm and we get going and
it doesn't end till around 4ish. We hadn't left the apartment all day
because of our planning and cleaning and I was starting to get really
tired and a head ache from staying inside so long. So I was excited to
get to our dinner appointment so I can get out of the house, but when
we called our dinner to confirm with them, they said they had to
cancel because of "scouts". And so I was like, "great, just another
hour to sit in the apartment." At this point I'm going nuts. So during
dinner we decide to watch the testaments movie (literally the only
approved movie for missionaries to watch during meals) and during the
movie I swear I lost all my motivation to do anything. I didn't want
to get off the couch, I didn't want to study, let alone leave the
apartment and go out and work. We had no lessons for that night and we
were just going to be tracting or street contacting all night. So I
was sitting there thinking, trying to justify anything in my head. I
kept saying to myself, "well we could just stay inside and call people
in the Areabook, or we could clean our apartment, or we could do some
extra study". But then I got thinking about how you always hear those
stories of missionaries praying about where to go and then they go
there and find that one person. And I've always heard those stories
and it never really hit home with me. But for some reason, I went in
front of our area map while elder Merrill was in the bathroom and
knelt down and said a prayer and asked Heavenly Father to give me the
strength and motivation to go out and work and then I asked him where
he wants us to go and I'm not usually one to do something like that. I
think I let my pride get in the way a lot but for some reason I
decided too this time. And as soon and I was done asking him where we
should go, Fairview Dr. popped right into my mind. We'd never worked
there before but for some reason I couldn't get that street off my
mind. So I finally told elder Merrill to get dressed (because it's
super cold) because we are going to work. And so we get to Fairview
Dr. and we start knocking on some doors and we'd knocked all the way
down one side of the street and we were starting to head back the
other way, we'd had no luck and I kept thinking to myself, there has
got to be a reason Heavenly Father sent us to this street. And sure
enough, we knock on this one door and a woman answers and we gave her
our little door approach and she invited us right in (probably because
she could see we were freezing) and she had us sit down on her couch
and we were able to teach her about the Book of Mormon and testify to
her of its truthfulness. She was really intrigued on what we had to
say and we asked her if we could come back on Tuesday and she agreed.
We gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon and invited her to read it
and she said she would. As we were walking home, I kept thinking to
myself, "I almost stayed in tonight, I was super close to just calling
it a night. If I would have done that, we wouldn't have found
Jeanette". Satan was putting it in my mind and trying to get me to
justify going out and working because he knew that if we went out we
would find Jeanette. I'm so grateful I followed the prompting of the
Holy Ghost to go to Fairview that night. I would have never known what
I missed if I hadn't gone out, but Heavenly Father would have known.
He had prepared Jeanette for us to come and visit her and all we
needed to do was ask where to go. Satan tried all he could to get me
to stay home but he lost. I like to think of satans temptations as a
competition. Who are you going to let win? Him or you? It's a battle
of good and evil. I'm just glad that I kicked his butt on that one.
I'm sure there will be many more of those instances to come to all of
us and I pray that we can always take heed to the promptings of the
Holy Ghost!
I love and miss you guys.
Elder Leishman
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| Aunt Jearlene had a conference in DC this week so Tanner got permission for her to take him and his companion to lunch. It was snowy and icy and they weren't allowed to drive, so they walked 1/2 mile to meet her - thus his pants were rolled up. |
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