Good VISA news . . .

11/25

Things are going really well here in the area. The ball has really started rolling and things will be picking up fast. Yesterday we had 5 less actives and 3 investigators at church. We have 3 people on date for baptism and one more that we are going to challenge on Wednesday. I think that he will accept.  

I would like to tell you about the Smiths. They're an awesome family we found We went to visit them after a different appointment fell through. Our appointment was a nice lady who wasn't that interested in the gospel, but she didn't want to be mean to us and tell us not to come again. After stopping by five times when she missed her appointment with us, we got the hint. We decided to try somewhere else and that's when we found the Smiths. 

The first time we stopped by, the husbanded answered and said that now wasn't a good time, that they were busy and not really interested and so it looked like another failure, but after talking with us for a few minutes on the doorstop, he had a change of heart and invited us in. We started talking to Elizabeth, the wife's older sister who lived with the family to take care of the kids while Penny, the wife, worked.

Elizabeth mentioned to us that she was a member of the church but hadn't been for years. Overall, she was pretty short with us, and her sister Penny watched TV the whole time in the room right next to us. Yeah, not the best time. 

But surprisingly they set up a time for us to come back and give a lesson. When we came next time, we asked if Penny would like to join us and she came over and sat with us and even turned off the TV. I don't even remember what the lesson was, but we found out that Penny was also a member of the church. After the lesson, she said that she wanted her daughter to be baptized. 

So that was crazy and we gave them Books of Mormon because they no longer had any, and we got another return appointment.

We continued to come over and teach them. During one lesson, I had the prompting to talk about the Tower of Babel and how it related to the doctrine of Christ in John 10:1 and 2 Nephi 31. So we talked about following Christ, being baptized, and the importance of enduring to the end. Penny works at a casino and doesn't have Sundays off so she can't come to church.

But after that lesson she said that she wanted her daughter to go to church the next day and Elizabeth said she also wanted to go too.

Later that day Penny called and asked for a blessing because she was having problems with her eye and wanted a blessing before she went to the doctor. We gave her a blessing, and I wanted to talk to her about quitting her job so she could go to church on Sundays because the gospel is most important. I didn't even have to bring it up. Right after the blessing, she asked us for the number of the unemployment specialist. She said she was going to quit her job and look for a new one because she want to go to church and the casino wasn't the best environment for her anyways.

I silently screamed YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

The point of this really jumbled message is to talk about just one of the miracles I've seen on my mission: how the Smiths hearts have changed. They went from not wanting us to come into their house to being willing to change their lives to follow Christ. 

I GOT MY VISA

by December 2nd I will be in Colombia