Thursday, May 22, 2014

Pushing the Work of Salvation forward

Dear family and friends,

It's been a really good week. We saw a lot of success. I attribute this to renewed diligence in planning. Not that we weren't diligent before, rather, we just put more emphasis on planning out our appointments in a smart way. We put enough space between each one to ensure, for the most part, that we could contact along the way to every day. It's a small and simple thing, but we were greatly blessed for it. We found many new people.

In the midst of this, I also learnt a great lesson. While we were contacting to an appointment, there was this guy covered in tattoos smoking outside of a tattoo parlor. I thought to myself "there is no way this guy will be interested" and geared up for rejection. We talked to him and he turned out to be way interested! He is already a Christian but doesn't have a church and wants us to help him quit smoking. Goes to show that we can't judge anyone on the streets. We cannot know who has been prepared by the Lord until we talk to someone. It's the same principle as finding out if the church is true, really... we don't know until we ask God! We can't know if someone is interested until we ask them!

We also picked up a new baptismal date. There is an investigator who was found a couple of years ago who, for various reasons out of her control, hasn't been able to be baptised. Things have fallen into place and, at last, she will be baptised this month :) we have set a date for May 31 but we might move it forward if she can quit smoking before then. She is SO excited and so are we. Our other baptismal date, Cash, is doing great. He is really excited for baptism. He said he wants to be baptised this week! But we have to teach him... so we set a date for May 31. We'll move it forward if needed, but since we can't see him much that will probably be the actual date. We have a number of other people who can have dates soon. It's exciting, exhausting, and fun! :)

I also had a really cool experience this week with family history. I decided to use some of the Work of Salvation internet hour to go on Family Search and work on the My Family book. I was reading up on one of my great-grandfathers on my moms side of the family. Naturally, I wanted to see if he served a mission. According to the document, he did... and his first companion was James A. Cullimore... Elder Cullimore's great-grandfather. WOW. When I read that, I felt something extremely powerful. As if there weren't enough crazy things about the fact that Elder Cullimore and I were companions! When I was skyping my family yesterday, I asked my grandma about all of this and she confirmed it and added that James Cullimore and my great grandfather were best friends. Wow. Talk about the Spirit of Elijah! I immediately formed a bond with my great-grandfather, a man I never met, and strengthened my bond with one of my best friends. What a blessing Family History work is!
I love you all oh so much! You are all incredible! I feel your prayers and love hearing from all of you each week!
With love,
Elder Fred

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