Dear Family and Friends,
"No power on earth or in hell can stop this
work or thwart the purposes of the Lord to have His soul-satisfying
gospel message go to His children. It may take disasters in many forms
to bring it about. But the purposes of God will be achieved. His
children will hear the gospel of salvation in His own due time." - Ezra
Taft Benson
Wow, what a
week!!! It was full of a lot of running around and getting stuff done.
Elder Kern and I did two divisions this week and boy did it tucker us
out. Divisions are fun in that we do different things and it mixes things up, but I love being with my companion, not necessarily just Elder Kern,
just being with my companion in general. :) Anyways, we just had changes
and...... I'm staying again!!! :D Haha, Elder Kern and I are going on
another change together! This will mark our 4th change together. We are
both really excited! We've got a lot of plans and a lot of goals we want
to fulfill. We keep telling each other, "This is our change, this is
our change!!" We didn't have a baptism this last change but we know what
we need to do better in order to get one. We are teaching about 5
families right now and we have about 3 more that are future
investigators. :) We really want to help baptize a family this change
and we know what we need to do in order to get it done!
I want to share two experiences from this week.
First, this last week I was trying to figure out what I should teach
about. I was looking at the results of our district from the last week
and I wasn't seeing anything that I needed to address, our district was
doing really well. I sat
there thinking and pondering and then it occurred to me...maybe as a
district we don't need to improve anything really pertinent, but maybe
there are things that the individual missionaries need to improve on.
And from there, I remembered my personal study on "Humility" and
"Charity, Love" from a few days ago. I started basing my class on that
and the class was basically centered on the fact that we have personal
weaknesses that we cannot overcome on our own. We need to humble
ourselves and seek the Lord's will and help in overcoming our
challenges. We also need to show our love for God in doing hard things,
not because we want to, but because He wants us to. Anyways, we read a
lot of scriptures and studied PMG. I thought it was a really good class
but I didn't think too much of it. The other night when getting the
goals for the next week from the sister missionaries in our district,
one of the sisters said that the class I prepared changed her life as a
missionary . . . wow. I had no idea, and I was so unsure of how to
respond, so I just said I was glad and thank you. Anyways, it was super
cool to me that by following the spirit, I was able to help this sister
missionary be the best missionary she can. Anyways, it was super cool :)
The second experience is when we were talking to a
couple in our ward. They talked about how they came to the knowledge of
the gospel. They said they had a lot of problems, family, economic,
etc., and these problems were taking their toll. The dad would drink and the
mom was fed up. Then one day the dad was walking home and the
missionaries stopped him. They asked if they could share a message so he
said to come the next day. So they did! When the elders showed up, the
mom told her husband two missionaries wanted to see him. He said, "Show
them in." The mom was so shocked that her husband was going to talk with
them. The next morning she was even more shocked when her husband got
up early, showered, and got dressed. She asked him, "Where are you
going." He said, "I'm going to church." She was dumbfounded. Two months
later he was baptized and a few months after so was she. :) Now they are
sealed in the temple and are super active, super great members. It was
just a testimony to me that people change and need the gospel :D
We've been following the spirit a lot this week and
inviting him more and more into our lessons. We had FANTASTIC lessons
with F., A. and A., G. and her family, C. and
her family; and more. It's been really cool to see. We don't really have
any baptismal dates and no one went to church yesterday and lots of
people are leaving for vacation. Ugh, it's kinda annoying... But, we
have a lot of people to visit and we are looking for more so we are SOO
excited :)
That's it for this week! Take care ya'll!!!
Elder Bushman
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| This is how we do missionary work in SANTIAGO CHILE!!! |
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| Elder Lee's last day - he's going to train! |
