Monday, November 18, 2013

Weekly Email - November 18th

The week has been great. We have had some wonderful teaching opportunities with a couple of really cool investigators. One kid, M, who is 18 is doing great and I think will shortly be preparing for baptism.

The really cool experience we had was with a former investigator named J. This man is a family guy, with a wife, two sons, and a daughter. All of his kids are around our age, but he acknowledges that we are teachers of the Lord's gospel. He is a really nice guy, he treated us to some food and tea and we sat down and all he wanted to do was talk about his family and the gospel. Unfortunately, his family is not interested as he is, but he is not down about that. He has been prepared for baptism before and had multiple baptismal dates and has backed out each time or postponed until he backed out. This time, we went in with a planned lesson on reading, praying, and going to church. He hadn't been taught in a little while, so we thought it would be good to do the basic three. When we got to talking to him, I felt like that was completely uneccessary. He shared with me a scripture he had read lately in the Book of Mormon, and how much it had meant to him, I asked if he prays and he said everyday. I asked if he has been out to church in a while, he said it had been a couple of weeks, but he was going the next day. I then felt like we needed a new lesson. For a second I had gotten nervous about what to teach him. Then a scripture came to mind in 3 Nephi 18. I went with that thought and turned there and shared a scripture on baptism and church, and made a connection in that scripture with the Holy Ghost. Then it hit me, he always backed out of baptism... Why? Well certainly there was some underlying fear or some sort of misunderstanding. I thought, if he could just understand what a blessing it was, and how great it would be to have that Holy Ghost all the time, what fear could he possibly have. I think sometimes missionaries make baptism out to be a bigger thing than it should be, while being essential, your circumstances in life do not immediately change as a result of baptism. The floor doesn't fall out from under you, birds won't come down and attack you, nor will you happen upon a million dollars and a chocolate bar down the street from your baptism... But.... You will have the gift of the Holy Ghost. I turned us in the scriptures to The Acts chapter 2. I love the story of the day of Pentacost. In the MTC, Brother Stice told us to have BOM heros to rely on when you have nothing else. I took that advice and added some bible heros and stories. Peter on the Day of Pentacost is my "go-to guy". We read how he was given the gift of the Holy Ghost with all the Apostles, they received the gift of tongues, and then Peter describes yet other gifts of the spirit "Your young mens will have visions, and your old men will dream dreams". So on and So forth. Then I testified of the power of that gift, I told him I would not be here in a state to testify to you in Polish without the help that the Lord provides. I then mentioned the ability he had to feel the Spirit right then, I told him that I knew he could feel the Spirit, but he could have that as a constant companion after baptism. I told him of the story of Peter's testimony of the divinity of Christ. That Christ asked his disciples "Who say ye that I am?" and Simon Peter responded "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God". Christ praised him for that response because he knew this from the Holy Ghost even before that gift had been bestowed upon him. It was a powerful lesson, and then J agreed that in our next appointment, we could set a baptismal date. We are excited for that, we were very straightforward and open with him and he was very open in return, I strongly feel that he is ready for batism, he just needs to make the decision to do it.
 
The rest of the week was also great, our members are awesome, they bring such a great spirit to the meetings and they are such good fellowshippers. We have some really good relationships here already and it will only get better. The city is beautiful, and it is getting decorated for Christmas especially in town square. They are bringing out the little market houses where they sell all sorts of fun trinkets, and we are excited for when they open up. So we are having a great time. Elder K is the man, we are getting along great and his Polish is amazing for 3 weeks in Poland. He came with some great communicaion skills.
 
Wish I had time to tell you more, but we have been rushed today, I love you all and hope everyone has a great week.
 
Z Miłością,
Starszy Godwin

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