April 25, 2011

Howdy,

This week was such a great week probably one of my favorite weeks this far in my mission. First of all Elder Zwick from the seventy came to tour our mission and second was that Roxane was baptized and to top it all off was that it was Easter and we were taken care of by our ward they gave us way too much candy! That is our week in a nutshell..

It is good to hear that things are busy at home. I'm sure that it is only getting busier and busier with the wedding and end of school year it always is a crazy time. That is great that you had the opportunity to share your testimony twice at church on Sunday. Isn't it the greatest feeling!! It is by far the best thing that any person can do is to share a heartfelt testimony of things that are so close to them. When Elder Zwick was here he told us that when we are teaching to shorten our testimonies and to make them more basic and then to share them with power. At the end he left 30 minutes for the missionaries to share their testimonies in 1 minute or less and it was so great to feel the power because people only have a minute so they say how they really feel and share what matters most to them. I feel like a lot of people love to drag their testimonies on and on sometimes.

Also another thing that Elder Zwick told us is that we need to build a firm foundation. That while on our missions, we need to get to know Jesus Christ the best that we can and to spiritually grow our entire missions. If we do that then we will see miracles and we will have a greater desire to work harder and to do the best that we can. It is cool having a general authority there to talk with and hear their experiences of how they got where they are and all the times that they lived on faith to accomplish something. Elder Zwick also held a fireside for all of the ward councils to be a part of and he talked about member missionary work and if the members work with us then our work can improve by 5 times! hopefully we can get more help and work harder to impress and develop the trust of the wards.

Then Saturday we had the baptism and it went really well there were at least 50 probably more people there to support Roxane in her decision. She is so awesome. Just ready to receive the gospel from day one. I was able to give a talk on baptism which was sweet. I love giving talks then the pressure is on me to learn enough to share something that is important for everyone there. I got some pictures and will send them home soon.

Sunday Roxane was confirmed and it went really well then we had an awesome sacrament meeting where we had musical numbers and then in between we had testimonies by members and it was sweet there are some extremely talented musicians in our ward. After church I did a baptismal interview and then went to a members home for Easter dinner. It was a huge dinner with about 20 maybe 25 members there and we got to know some members I hadn't meet too much before and talked about their careers which are really cool. They were teachers in the innercity at high schools. Then at the end of dinner Elder Foust and I got to share a spiritual message. We first invited a couple members to share their testimonies and they were such great testimonies. Then We talked about Christ resurrection and how he told peter to feed his sheep and how Jesus wouldn't ever tell us to do something that wasn't the best thing for us. And I shared my testimony and then Elder Foust shared his testimony.

We then left dinner and were walking home a different way than I usually would go because I thought that it would be faster. We were walking down a street and I was thinking we should've went the other way where there would be people we could talk to. Just as I was thinking that this guy walks around the corner and pointed at us and said "I told you I would see you guys again." I had no idea who he was at first. I was thinking what am I going to do. Then I had kind of a flash back moment when we meet him down the street from our house and we gave him a Book of Mormon with a Word of wisdom pamphlet in it because he was smoking. I asked him if he read the Book of Mormon yet and he told me that he hadn't but that he needed too. Then I shared my testimony of the book and he said he was reading another book. I then told him that the book was so good that by the things we teach I could still remember his name (we met him like 3 weeks ago and talk to hundreds of people a day). He then asked me what is my name. I told him that it was Glenn. And he freaked out and couldn't believe I remembered. He didn't seem to interested in anything at that time and we went our separate ways, but it was a cool experience the Lord leads us to places that we are supposed to be in if we are being obedient to his commandments and he won't let us go astray. Also the spirit helped me remember his name and everything that we talked with him about on the street 3 weeks ago or so. This is the best thing I could be doing no matter how hard it may be our how awkward situations may seem sometimes. I can't wait to talk to you guys on mothers day it will be great. I love you and hope you have a great week.

Love Elder Beau Hunter