January 2, 2012

Family,


This week has been really good. We got our transfer calls on saturday, new year's eve, and discovered that basically Elder Leavitt and I are the only ones in the zone who are staying the same. Ottawa zone always gets moved around...No one really knows why...

We had a lot of miracles, this last week. Lots of good stuff.
We had our lovely chinese investigator, Mr. Johnson, who came to church. He's super great. I've never seen someone listen so intently at church! I've never really encountered this kind of situation though, teaching someone who has never even considered the concept of God. But you know, God is always a part of our lives, whether we know of him or not. Johnson told us of times previous in his life (While living in China) where he didn't know what to do, and prayed to himself, not knowing who else to pray to. This touching experience reminded me of a scripture in Romans 2:14-15. Very applicable to Johnson. Our Zone is seeing miracles as of late, we hope to double the amount of baptisms we had last month--and teams are working hard enough to see this come to pass. It's about time that us missionaries here wake up and take advantage of the members here who are willing and waiting to introduce their friends to the church. Elder Leavitt and I are trying a method that we found in Preach my gospel.

Every family we visit, we hand everyone a piece of paper and ask them to write a list of their friends and acquaintances. Then we share scriptures with them, explaining the importance of sharing the gospel and the blessings that follow. Afterwards we kneel and pray with the family, and then they ponder for a couple minutes over their names and choose one name of the which they can contact and have a conversation about the gospel with. It is working really well, people are becoming excited about the wonderful work that is the work of growing the kingdom. I encourage the Holm family to do the same, to sit down for family home evening and write a list of friends and acquaintances, then pray over a name of someone that could be contacted within the next week or two. Share the special spirit of our home by inviting non-members to come over.

Church was wonderful, one of my favorite hymns is "Ring out, Wild Bells." A beautiful song.

Well have a wonderful week everyone!

Elder Holm (1)