May 17, 2011

Hey everybody!



Well Elder Hansen are staying but I'm going on another 3 leg! Elder Marsden is coming in so we'll have to get a new bed in. This will be fun.


This week was incredible! Mike is solid and is ready to baptized this Friday. The ward is really excited about it. He asked Brother Kinneard (Elder's quorum president) to baptize him and he asked me to confirm him. We also reviewed the baptismal interview questions with Nick and he passed! So Mike and Nick will be baptized this Friday together. He had no concerns with any of the commandments and is ready. He loved church and enjoyed how everyone there gives different perspectives on topics. Isabel sits in the background on the lessons. She only wants the lessons if Sister Pozzi is there.

We also found out yesterday that Tiffany's mom said she can get baptized as well. She's been taught for the past 2 years and has been coming to church. Her mom figured if Nick was qualified to be baptized then Tiffany could be baptized as well! Tiffany will be baptized on June 4th.

We taught Mengi on Saturday as well. There's a big language barrier with him. He's from Ethiopia but only speaks English. His accent is hard to understand and we don't think he clearly understands everything we are telling him. We taught the rest of the Plan of Salvation and he believes it's God's plan for us. As we talked about baptism, he still hasn't grasped the concept of the Restoration that our church has the only authority to baptize. He said he feels like we're not impressing him. We resolved his concern by telling him that we aren't capable of giving him the answer but that God will give him that knowledge he needs. He didn't accept the firm but Elder Hansen and I are seeing a huge change as we've focused on teaching towards the commitment. It makes the biggest difference especially in our contacting apporaches as well.

We met with Bruce again. He had questions about the 3 kingdoms of glory. He doesn't believe that God would keep someone who is unrighteous from living with Him. He had the concern that he wouldn't want to live in the celestial kingdom if his dad wasn't there. We talked about the importance of commandments and how there' rewards and blessings for keeping those commandments. There's also punishment for us when we don't keep commandments. We then went into depth about the spirit world and how we will all be taught about Jesus Christ and how if we didn't have the opportunity to accept Christ, then we will have the opportunity to do so. We also emphasized that it is never our place to judge someone for their works. That lies with a perfect judge who is God. He knows us better than we know ourselves and will take into consideration our circumstances and trials that we went through. He doesn't agree with it but then we talked about our testimonies of Joseph. Bruce said he skims through the Book of Mormon so we commited him to read and pray about it everyday. He does have a divorce that has to go through so we'll use the baptism to speed up the process. He does have WOW issues so we got him the Stop Smoking Prgram.

Lots of miracles going on in Prairie Winds. The member trust is skyrocketing and everyone is excited about the upcoming events. Revelation is definitely the key.

Love,

Elder Madsen