Monday, July 7, 2014

Got another baptismal date..Wahooo!

Hello (:

This week went really well! We had a productive meeting with the stake presidency yesterday morning. We are going to start coordinating more with the high councilmen over missionary work every week by phone. We should begin to see good results from that. (: Hasten the work!

As goes for investigators, Elder Welker and I were excited to have our investigator Xing Xing, or Ben, attend church yesterday. He is a foreign exchange student from China going to a university out here. His baptismal date is for July 26th and he got up and bore his testimony in the meeting! What?!?! It was amazing! He can't speak much English which makes it even better. (: He uses such simple terms and bore testimony how he knows God lives and that Heavenly Father has help him overcome smoking. It was so great! We had a good lesson with him this week and he asked about the sacrament, and why everybody prays, and we explained to him what the sacrament symbolized, and he understood, and yesterday during the sacrament we looked over and he was folding his arms and bowing his head. Such a great experience!

We also saw our investigator Nolan. He is really great! We taught him about scripture study and prayer and he committed to praying and reading the Book of Mormon everyday. We are excited to follow up with him.

We had a lesson with our investigator Luke. Elder Welker and I are trying to find a new teaching style for him. He has a short attention span, and doesn't really soak in the lessons we teach. Regardless we read the introduction and the title page of the Book of Mormon and he accepted a baptismal date of August 9th.

We taught our investigator Justin. He seemed really grateful for the visit. He has had a hard past few months. He has read the Book of Mormon a few times all the way through, and he feels like it is true, and even defends it at points.
He also wants to get other members opinions on it. After the lesson our WML called him and invited him to the temple trip the ward was having on Tuesday. Our WML is so great! so on top of everything! He was really grateful for the call and is going to try to get Tuesday off work (:

We saw a miracle and found a pretty prepared person in Moorpark, who is from Bakersfield. It was cool, because Elder Welker had a prompting to go see this potential investigator in Moorpark after we had already started heading back to Thousand Oaks. The potential wasn't there, but his dad was there, and his dad's brother was interested in learning more. So that was a cool tender mercy from the Lord!

Elder Welker is great. He really does his best to be obedient in ALL things. Seriously. He is the most obedient companion I've ever had. He takes obeying with exactness to a new level. It is a definite strength, but he does seem to get down on himself pretty often though, and I am trying to help him through that. But he seems to be doing good. We are strengthening our relationship day by day. 

In my studies this week, I continued studying 1 Nephi 5 from an institute class we went to. It is where Sariah is scared that Lehi and her's sons have probably been killed or have perished after approximately a month, and she calls Lehi a visionary man. Instead of contending with Sariah, he shows humility, and says that he knows he is a visionary man, but because of that he knows he has "obtained the promised land." It is cool that he says that in the past tense, although at that time they were in the wilderness. I related it to my patriarchal blessing, and how I have already "obtained" those blessings if I remain faithful.

Well! Thank you for the birthday money (: I really appreciate all your love and support! Have a great week! love and miss you! 

Love,
Elder Teeples (:

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