March 7, 2011

Hey everybody!

Well, this week was pretty interesting! It was definitely a cold one especially with the wind chill going up to -36C. There wasn't a lot of people to talk to on the streets... I wonder why.

This week was pretty good. We taught Mikhael the first lesson in 2 different days. He wants to learn more before he is baptized. Teaching is very slow.He said it takes him 5 minutes to translate one word in the Book of Mormon. He has a lot of desire to learn and is taking it one step at a time as he says. He didn't come to church this week but was at the zone leader's baptism. He says he feels "troubled" about making the step to be baptized.

We met with Bev on Thursday. She's an interesting child of God. She brings up quite a few tangents during the lesson which are easily avoided by the response, "We'll research that during this week and get back to you on that, but what is important to understand now is.." We were prepared to teach the Plan of Salvation but after she started talking about finding her way and where to go, we felt prompted to teach Lesson 1. It went pretty well. She had lots of questions and concerns which drug out the lesson pretty far but we were able to resolve and answer a lot fo her questions. She believes that Joseph saw God and Jesus Christ. We firmed her for March 26th and she said yes! She does have some word wisdom issues and is moving at the end of the month so we'll see how things progress regarding that. She is planning on giving up smoking. We've invited her to church and to the Addicition Recovery Program.

2 of the potentials we found last weekend dropped us (within 10 minutes of each other) which is always frustrating. We worked a lot with the members this week in inviting their friends. It's amazing how when we begin, people feel like there's nobody they can invite. But as we talk about people they could potentially invite, it's amzing how simple an invitation to meet with the missionaries sounds.

I love each of you. It is quite cold up here but I'm doing well. I hope that you're able to find ways to invite your nonmeber friends unto Christ this week.

Love,

Elder Madsen