Well, the trio is over! I'm being transferred to East Calgary in the Prairie Winds area with Elder Reese! It's going to be tough leaving this area especially with all of the miracles that we saw this week!
On Friday, we met with Florentino and his best friend Ramil. Ramil is 42 and has a family back in the Phillipines. Last week, we 7 dayed the family and this is the man he invited. We talked to him about the church and got to know him very well. We gave him a Book of Mormon and invited him to take the discussions. As soon as we gave him the Book of Mormon, we asked if he would read and pray about it and before I could even finish the question, the Spirit touched his heart and he said, "Yes!" I asked why and he said he felt a comforting feeling in his heart that was overwhelming him. Just goes to show it's not our words but the Lord's. They'll be teaching him on Wednesday (the day I get transferred).
Antoine is progressing. Brother Black brought him to Calgary for stake conference. He loved it. The Spirit was so strong and his favorite part was the "testimonies by the young people". The youth are so powerful, they should never underestimate the power they have. We taught him about Joseph Smith and he believes that he is a prophet of God because he knows the Book of Mormon is true after praying about it! His main concern is the word of wisdom and we talked about the times when he feels the strongest urges to drink coffee and alcohol. He identified them and set goals to see how he can accomplish this commandment. He is still preparing for March 12.
We got a call from Sister Mooney and she invited her friend at work to stake conference. They watched it and she loved it and wants her family to take the discussions. They'll have a first lesson on Saturday (again, after transfers).
The work is prgressing and it is blatently obvious that it's the Lord leading and guiding all of us who are working together to those people who are prepared to learn more. Elder Brimhall of the 70 from Colorado came to stake conference and then gave us a training afterwards. He gave us each a copy of our mission call letters and we read it. He said when we got our calls, the only things we cared about were where we were going, the language we were speaking and when we would leave. Now we read the paragraphs that mattered. I was overwhelmingly reminded of why I am out here and who I am representing.
I love each of you and hope that all is going well for you. I pray for you and know that prayers have been offered in my behalf as well. Elder Brimhall gave a great analogy of how we need to be patient with God. He said imagine you are standing on the sidewalk of a busy intersection. Across the street, you notice an exact point of where you want to go and immeditaely, you want to cross the street and go straight to it. But there are cars flying by and so God directs us to go to the corner where we can cross safely. But in our minds, we're thinking, "Why am I going over here, that's not what I where I want to go," when in reality, it is the only way we can reach that point safely. Often times, we have challenges that we wonder ,"Why do I need this? This is not the path I want to go!" and he said we pray that our challenges go away. Elder Maxwell said you need to be careful when you pray for challenges go away because you may also be praying for blessings to go away as well.
Love,
Elder Madsen
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