Weird Week

K so this week was weird. We had significantly less stats this week, but I feel like we got a lot more done. All of the lessons that we had this week were kick butt lessons where the Spirit was very strong and moving for all present. Also we got a ward clean up list that we've been actually able to make contact with the people. It's crazy because usually people in West Linn are only ever willing to open the door from 5:30 to 7:45. It's been a blessing to be able to contact all these people and finding out where they are in life no matter what time of the day we go to find them. We've also been able to take our massive potential investigators list and cross off handfuls of people each day, because they've finally opened the door! All this means that we might have some more time for tracting in a few weeks! Tracting is the best.

So miracles from this last week:

We tried to contact some part member families and found out this one particular one had moved. That's usually the story around here. If you haven't seen them at church, chances are they've joined another church, or moved. usually moved. But instead we talked to this lady who told us that the person we were looking for had moved a year previous. We talked to her about the book of Mormon and told her where is came from. She asked who wrote it and we told her the prophets that we actually in the book, but it was translated by Joseph Smith from reformed Egyptian. She said she would be interested to read it. So we gave her a copy.

We thought that was the end of that, but then at priesthood session the young men's president (who's a BEAST! He could have played pro football of basketball) came up to us and said that apparently while we were trying to contact someone else we ended up giving a Book of Mormon to one of his good friends and she had texted his wife about it for a while. This was a double miracle in disguise because this guy has tried to give us advice on how to do missionary work in the past. He practically accused us of doing it completely wrong. But at the end of that he told us good job and that we were really building the kingdom of God. It was sweet. So he's now working on two different people to give to us as referrals. But with everything in this area, it takes lots of time to make any progression with investigators.  That's why God gave us eternity, right? ha ha. I can definitely say that I've become much more patient in this area. If you're not patient here, all you're going to get is a bucket full of frustration thrown over your head each day. ha ha.

We taught J. about tithing this week. I knew it wold be a touchy subject because of the fact that he just lost his job AND he's trying to go back to school, but I knew he needed the blessings that come from Tithing. As we taught we could feel the Spirit building the whole time. J told us that he's had a hard time with that ever since a certain event that cause him to go less active 4 years ago, but that he'd been thinking about it lately. We continued to testify, and eventually promised some very specific blessings by the Spirit. It's incredible to see how the Spirit works. I feel like I know just a tid bit of how Paul felt when he saw the boy fall from the balcony and then feel compelled to raise him from the dead because of his love for him and then have it confirmed by the spirit. Charity is the start of miracles. It does so for many reasons, but it also prevents "a multitude of sins." My Companion confirmed that promise because he felt the Spirit as I made the promises, and I've never seen J. so sober and receptive during a lesson before. I only hope it moves him to action.

Conference was fantastic. I learned a ton about the things that I've been wanting to know more about (peace, comfort, healing; which are 3 totally separate things btw). I kind of got to the point of spiritual overload half way through the 5th session. I need to listen to elder Christofferson's talk again because I just couldn't soak any more in.

I love you