October 12, 2010

Hey everybody!

So in Canada, it goes Thanksgiving, Halloween and then Christmas. This was a very weird feeling but I did get 2 Thanksgiving dinners so I guess I'll deal with it. If I stay In Lethbridge, the Gemmel's said they would feed me an American Thanksgiving in November so cross your fingers and pray for me... aGAIN!!

So this week was crazy! This family, the Wetterstrand's (picture the most missionary minded family and that's them) were challenged by us in June to invite one of their non member friends to receive the missionary lessons within a week. So they had us knock on their friend's door. His name is John and he's about 75 and his wife just passed away. We told him we were friends with Brother Wetterstrand and he let us in. We talked about fishing and cooking salmon (thanks mom) for about an hour. We then asked if he wanted to learn more about our church. He said no but wanted us to come back. We told the Wetterstrand's and they've been inviting him to ward activites for the past 3 months! So then Elder Stevens and I went over and we would always have fun chats because he's very lonely and is retired. We'd always ask if he wanted to learn more and he would say no. So, this past week, Elder Flygare said the next we came back, he would have to ask some really good questions about our church so that he could see if he could stump us. John had a big smile on his face and sure enough, on Thursday he had some pretty good questions. We were able to answer them and he said our answers made sense. We told him he needed to come up with more questions for us. So on Saturday we came back and he brought up the questions. We answered them again and he started asking questions that had to deal with the Plan of Salvation. So sure enough, we taught him the second lesson and invited him to be baptized. He said he was already baptized but still wanted to learn more about our church. We gave him a Book of Mormon to read and he was already reading parts of it towards the end so I'm very confident that he will read from it.

It was so sweet and there was a very valuable lesson that came from this experience. You never know what a simple invitation can do. If the invitation is out of love and given for the right purposes (like the way we invited), then the person you will share the gospel with will understand why you're giving that invitation. It was an incredible experience and I am so eager to meet with John again.

Amber is getting baptized this Saturday (cross your fingers). President is going to be raising an eyebrow when he sees that we're only baptizing 13 year old girls. Just kidding! We talked to Bishop and he said that he is comfortable with Amber being baptized because she is a regular attender of Young Women's and has had some rough circumstances with going to church this summer with being out of town. Before the summer, she would go to church regularly. It's so sweet being able to see these miracles and being able to watch the Lord's hand in this area. My prayers are being answered as far as being able to see the fruits of our labors.

I love my Savior and know He is there. He is watching over us daily and wants us to be happy. I love you all and hope that during the week, you can find ways to come closer to Him.

Love,
Elder Madsen