I'm German, I used my muscles!

This week was AMAZING! there were so many miracles that happened this week and I don't think I can write them all. It was so cool to see the week and the work unfold bit by bit. but first a few questions

So President gave us a challenge to look through our area book and to go see all of the former investigators from them. We took one afternoon to try and contact people and 3 of the sets of former investigators invited us to come back. On top of that we received 3 new investigators this last week and one of them has a baptism date for October 12th, the week after General Conference.

That guy's name is W. He's 21 and never grew up with religion but he has been wondering recently about what the whole point of life is. He works 4 jobs just to support himself. He has no support from his family and he has insomnia. He's pretty much constantly stressed out. Even though his fists are registered weapons, he's one of the nicest and kindest guys I've ever met. He's a double black belt in Krav Maga and Moi Thai. He's awesome. His prayers are the most sincere prayers I've ever seen. He never used to pray before he met the missionaries, but he really just talks to God. He feels like God has really shown his hand in his life. He's found purpose in the Gospel. He came to Sacrament meeting this last week and the ward just swarmed him with support. A bunch of the kids and teenagers in there he's taught martial arts to, and a few families invited him to come to dinner with us. It was awesome. He's not even a member, but the ward here merely heard that he was in need and they wanted to lend their support. It's super cool. We're meeting with him tonight and we're going to teach him how to tie a tie.

The next cool thing was F. S. and his wife. F. wasn't initially too interested in the Book of Mormon. We gave him and his wife 3 Nephi 11 and beyond to read a few weeks ago and the wife loved it. When we came back we talked to them about the Book of Mormon and where it came from. When F. learned that the book of Mormon was written in Egyptian and arabic orginally he locked in his attention. I guess he thought Joseph Smith wrote it originally. They really want to go to the Portland Temple Visitor's center and go into the Atrium inside the temple. I'm excited for them because I honestly feel like I've done nothing. Them reading the Book of Mormon and seeing how it goes hand in hand with the Bible gets them really interested to learn more. I think that's the coolest part about missionary work. All I have to do is give people the chance to read the book of mormon and they can find out for themselves.

Next awesomeness (and the whole reason behind the title for the week) was the following. When I first got here I followed up with a lady that Elder Udy had tracted into with Elder Adam Manwill (who I went to High school with). She told us to come back in 6 months. We did and we never could find her at home until just this last week. When we saw her she was outside doing yard work. We offered to help. She told us that we weren't dressed for the occasion and I told her "We wear these suits for 2 years. We honestly look for opportunities to get them dirty." and she let us help. In the course of the conversation we found out that she has a sick horse and that she just kicked her alcoholic husband out of the house for good last week. We asked her what her background in religion was and she told us that she's searched for a while, but nothing ever felt right. We started to finish up the leaf raking and weeding and what not when she told us her vision for what the house was going to look like. It was wayyyyy more work than she could do by herself. We told her we could come with an army of helpers on Saturday and get the hill on the side of her house dug out and put up a rock wall. And we did. Saturday was one long day of physical activity. We went non stop from 6 AM till 5 PM on nothing more than 2 bagels and a half a cup of rice. It went Olympic Weight lifting, sports with the City/ the people we're teaching, service cutting blackberry vines at G.'s with Machetes and then digging at J.'s. It was crazy. I've never dug so hard in my life and I've done a TON of digging on my mission. J. was really impressed with how much we got done. She got to meet some of her neighbors that she's never met, we all laughed, worked hard, and sweated a ton. We asked her at the end if she got a chance to read the Book of Mormon and if she'd like to learn a little more about where the Book of Mormon came from. SHE SAID YES! It was the biggest miracle I'd seen all week because she is such a shy person I don't think if we hadn't done service that she would've said yes to that question. She is EXTREMELY soft spoken. I can't wait to see what happens when we meet with her this week :)

D. was the happiest I've seen him in months this last sunday. It really good to see him like that. He deserves happiness for sure. School has been really good for him and keeping him busy.

That's only half of the stuff I saw this last week. God's hand is in this work for certain. there's no way any of this could've happened without his Spirit directing my Mission President and us. The crazy thing is seeing how much of it simply comes from being super organized and then just doing what comes to your mind. Often the Spirit can speak to you that softly. When you pray about something before you start and then just buckle down you can bet your buckets that God will be there helping you to have the ideas that He knows will work. 2 Nephi 32 talks about that in the bottom right hand column of the first page. I can't tell you the verse off hand. God's hand is often imperceptible at times, but when you look back, hind sight is 20/20. I love that. I love you guys. Stay zesty!