Nice Try JWs

Dear Family,

This week went well.  We had our interviews with President Ferrin which went really well. We also did a division with Elder Cleveland this week which was fun.We also had a really cool experience this week that I sent to President so I will include it here at the end.  However only 3 more days until I officially have 1 year on the mission.  It´s pretty crazy to think that it has already been a year.  I am looking back on this past year and realizing that I really have learned a lot.  I think the most valuable thing that I have learned is to see the Spirit of the Lord working in our lives.  Moroni 10 describes the gifts of the Spirit and looking back on this past year I can say that I´ve seen a lot of them. Verses 8-18 say

8.And again, I exhort you, my brethren, that ye deny not the^agifts of God, for they are many; and they come from the sameGod. And there are ^bdifferent ways that these gifts are administered; but it is the same God who worketh all in all; and they are given by the manifestations of the ^cSpirit of God untomen, to profit them.  

9 ^aFor behold, to one is given by the Spirit of God, that he may^bteach the word of wisdom;

 10 And to another, that he may ^ateach the word of ^bknowledge by the same Spirit;

 11 And to another, exceedingly great ^afaith; and to another, the gifts of ^bhealing by the same Spirit;

 12 And again, to another, that he may work mighty ^amiracles;

 13 And again, to another, that he may prophesy concerning allthings;

 14 And again, to another, the beholding of angels andministering spirits;

 15 And again, to another, all kinds of tongues;

 16 And again, to another, the interpretation of ^alanguages and ofdivers kinds of tongues.

 17 And all these gifts come by the Spirit of Christ; and theycome unto every man severally, according as he will.

 18 And I would exhort you, my beloved brethren, that yeremember that ^aevery good ^bgift cometh of Christ.

I can confidently say that I have already seen many of these spiritual gifts.  The Lord still works miracles as long as we have the faith!  Here is one miracle that we saw this week.

The story started on Wednesday when we were walking in the street.  There were two women on the side of the street talking to each other.  On of them was inside the garage of her house and the other one was outside talking through the garage door.  We felt like we should do a contact with them.  We started talking to them only to find out that the lady outside of the garage door was a Jehovah´s Witness and the one inside of the garage door was a lady who is receiving the lessons from the Jehovah´s Witnesses!  Without talking too much about the church, because we weren´t looking to argue with them, we thanked them for their time and left.  Later that day we were back in the same neighborhood on the same street.  For some reason we felt like we should knock the door of that house.  We knocked and the lady who studies with the JWs came out.  We started talking to her about our church and she admitted to us that she didn´t think she would be able to be a JW because she didn´t agree with a lot of their doctrine.  We asked her if we could come back the next day to teach her and her kids a lesson (she has 4 kids).  She accepted to have us back.  We went back the next day and started teaching her and her kids the restoration.  At the end of the lesson I was writing a message in the Book of Mormon for her when she randomly said ´´I´m feeling something really, really good right now.  I can´t really explain it, but I´ve never felt this before.  I´ve been to a lot of church´s but I´ve never felt anything like this.´´ We explained to her that it was the Holy Ghost testifying of the truthfulness of our message.  She said ´´I believe you.  Yesterday after I talked to you guys I was kind of afraid to let you guys come back.  After all there are a lot of bad things that happen in the world these days.  So I prayed and asked God to not let you guys come back unless you were truely his servants.  Today when you guys came back I felt that I should let you in, and I guess now I know why.´´  Then out of nowhere I heard Elder Bracken (the greenie with barely 2 months in the field) invite her for baptism and she accepted!  Now we are helping her prepare for baptism.  It was an awesome lesson and one of the most spiritual experiences of my mission.  It was especially awesome to see Elder Bracken mark a baptism!!  

That´s it for this week.  Let´s hope that this next year is even better than the last one!

 

Love you all and hope you have a good week!

-Elder Caleb Anderson