Yr. 2, Week 3: We Need to Make the Lord our First Priority.

Dear Famiy and Friends,

Wow, this week was a little strange in the fact that we had a tough week as far as lessons taught goes but at the end of the week I felt really good about it and very pumped up :) Before I get to some of the things that happened during the week, here's some thoughts from my sweet mother's email:

So the big fire in Chile is NOT in Santiago, but Valparaíso...like 2 1/2 hours away! So we are safe from it here but it is really tragic :S We're really sad for these people and also the people from Iquique (seriously like 1,000 kilometers away, we didn't feel anything) where the big earthquake was... So about missionary work online, honestly, that is the mission president's least concern, he's not that big into it. I doubt we'll be doing it during my time in the mission. When we are in people's homes, we always make it a point to say hello to everyone at the meal, or the lesson, or when we drop by a house. We always try to talk to the youth and help them out and stuff.

We had a really cool experience this week. We had been visiting the A. family for quite some time and Elder Kern and I were feeling that things just weren't going to work out with them. They weren't keeping their commitments, they skipped out on appointments, and left members hanging on visits as well. So, we stopped going by. This week we got a call from Hermana A. asking us why we didn't go by. We told her that we didn't think they wanted us to continue to pass by. She told us to pass by her house. So we did and we shared the story of Martha and Mary and why we need to make the Lord our first priority. We were a little forward with them but we were honest in that we said that we nor the Lord could make a difference in their lives UNLESS He was their first priority! They committed to going to church and we were really praying they would show up. Church started and they weren't in the chapel. The sacrament started and they still hadn't showed up! But the sacrament ended, and guess what...their family walked it :) YEAH!!!! Several members went up and said hi to them. They said they liked it and we were feeling really good about them!! :) It was truly a miracle!

Yesterday, in addition to the normal meetings at church, we had the Chapel Openhouse for the other ward. We still participated and invited a lot of people to it! Our investigator family went to it and really enjoyed it. Elder Kern and I had previously invited them to be baptized but they avoided the invitation; but after our presentation on baptism, they said they had A LOT of doubts and questions cleared up about why we are baptized and what it is that baptism does :) Hopefully that will mean significant progress soon!! Also in the openhouse, we did a presentation to a woman who has been inactive for 20 years. For some reason, the presentation took the angle of the gift of the holy ghost instead of baptism. She said she still remembers how she felt when she received the Holy Ghost. She said she wants to feel it again. Then a sister from the ward mentioned baptisms for the dead so I asked if she had ever been to the temple... She said no. I asked her if here grandparents or great-grandparents were members... She said no. Elder Kern and I invited her to come back to church after 20 years next week and to talk with the bishop about receiving a temple recommend to go to the temple and do baptisms and confirmations for her ancestors. She agreed :) We were so ecstatic :)

So this week we had a great correlation meeting with our ward mission leader, Hermano A.! We talked a lot about our investigator families and we are really excited to involve the ward with these people so that they go to church and enjoy the blessings of the restored gospel :) We are also going to be receiving two assistants to the WML, a guy who will head on his mission in one year and a recently returned missionary from Brazil. :) We're really, really excited!!!!! :)

Anyways, this was just a small portion of all the MARVELOUS things that happened this week :)

Love you all, take care!!!

Elder Bushman

"Gather the Saints, but do not flatter; invite, but do not urge, and by no means compel any one."
 - Brigham Young