14 June 2010

Thanks for all the letters and emails. I got to open letters today, so that means I got a letter from Elder Tyree. He’s doing well. Thanks for the pictures and the talk. I’m going to read it as soon as my companion starts doing his email.

So the other day I realized that I never saw a picture of Megan where she was visibly pregnant. Was Megan never “big with child”? At least for me she never was. That’s exciting that Wyatt is home. Have fun with that.

Oh, and Stevo, I hope your birthday was smashing. It just so happens that one of our investigators had a baby on your birthday. Carolina had a boy. Unlike Weston’s, he came a week late and is really ruining her chances of going to church. Lucky for us the other kids in this family are great. Two of Carolina’s kids have come to church with us and this week they invited their cousing. We’ll see how that all goes.

So this week was another miraculous week at church. We had 6 investigators – 3 kids from Carolina, a member’s mom and sister, and another lady we found this week. This other lady should be a member because her son is serving a mission in Nevada. Unfortunately, she smokes and is not married.

So, this week I had an interesting insight and I saw how something I did was prompted by the Spirit when I didn’t even realize it. There is an inactive member we visited. The first time we visited him he was yelling and really grouchy at us. We went back because we said we would. We wanted him to feel the Spirit again. At one point this brother was a member of the branch presidency and endowed. He was offended and inactive ever since. We talked to him about the Book of Mormon and bore our testimonies. Then I shared Brad’s testimony with him. Brad sent me his testimony in Spanish one time. That morning I looked for the piece of paper and put it in my backpack, don’t know why. In the lesson the Spirit told me to read it, and I did, and the Spirit was strong. Then the Spirit taught me something that this brother needed to know. Why are missionaries transferred and come to an area knowing nothing about the people? I told the brother that I don’t know why he’s inactive, and frankly I told him I don’t care why. It doesn’t matter why. All I want is this guy to go to church to get the blessings the Lord has ready for him. That is how the Lord feels. He doesn’t care what happened before. He just wants us now. It was an interesting insight that I never thought of before. And the Spirit was really strong.

Mom mentioned that I had been gone a year. That’s true. It goes by really quickly. I’m not the same person I was a year ago. I’ve grown in ways that would be impossible to achieve in any other way. It’s an incredible work. Thanks for supporting me and encouraging me.

I love you all.

Elder Whitaker