June 11, 2018 . Another miracle-found a family to teach!

Sunny days out here in Waterloo. Been able to get a nice tan...on half my arms and my face hahaha. Legs are um ..alittle whiter then flour 🤣. It's a rough go having to wear paints when it's 30 plus 🤣. But been a good time. Well this week we had some cool experiences and was very eventful to say the least. First really cool experience was we were walking around talking to people just trying to find some people that would be down to listen to us. As we met this one lady we found out she was from Barbados and had only been here for a couple of months. She was on her way to get some groceries and so she had a second to talk. We started talking her about what we do as missionaries and started to get to know her. She ended up giving us her address and she said 'go right now, my son is there and you can teach him'. So we said we would talk to her later and go stop by to see her son. We knocked on the door and the sweetest guy came! He was super jacked and just like a really down to earth guy. We found out he was nineteen, and just like his mom, had only been here for a couple months. We ended up getting to teach him about the plan of salvation!!! So that was crazy awesome! We will be meeting with him again soon and the rest of his family that came over (there's around 6 of them!!). Anyway just a miracle that God was able to put us in a place we could run into the mom and end up meeting her son and the rest of the family! Cool story two. My comp and I had this feeling we should not drive for the afternoon. So we started walking and less then 5min into our walk we hear "Hey you guys from Utah"?! Yells a old women from her car in the middle of the road with cars behind her Haha! I respond no and my comp says yes. Started talking as people behind her were getting mad and trying to get her to get going. But we told her to pull over and we ran across the street to talk to her. We found out she had been taught by missionaries before and wants us back over as her husband had passed away recently and wants to talk! We have an appointment with her on tuesday and she has been in contact with us through last week! This is so exciting because I can see that we listened to the spirit we were able to find a new person to teach! We have been praying for this a lot as teaching has been slow here. But it's all good, people have their agency and all we can do is invite and hope to find those ready. We leave it in the hands of God and he always is there to help us out. I love being able to know that as we put ourselves in situations to find people more often than not we end up finding a person ready and willing to hear of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. We had a baptism planned for last Saturday but last minute had to cancel as our investigator couldn't make it back in time from work. So we will be moving it to another time. He has had his interview and is all ready to go, just need to find a day that he doesn't work now. Lately I have been studying pre-earth life. This topic explains where we came from. It's amazing to have this knowledge and be able to explain it to others, as many never have even thought of where we came from. It is explained really well in gospel topics, a book produced by the church. It says "We learned that He would provide an earth for us where we would prove ourselves. A veil would cover our memories, and we would forget our heavenly home. This would be necessary so we could exercise our agency to choose good or evil without being influenced by the memory of living with our Heavenly Father. … He would help us recognize the truth when we heard it again on earth". I love that we have agency. Nothing is forced, that doesn't mean everything we choose is good though. We know for ourselves what is good and evil because of the light of Christ. The light of Christ is something everyone has that gives us the ability to know good from evil. I also love that it says "He would help us recognize the truth when we heard it again". We can know the truth for ourselves through the Holy Ghost testifying of truths. A scripture I have shared before in Galatians 5 explains the feelings the Spirit gives us "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace", as we feel these feelings we can know for ourselves as we seek truth what is good and what is bad. The key is we have a desire to seek these things and put in an effort. It won't just happen. Just like playing a basketball game, just because I have the ball doesn't mean I'm going to score. I have to actually put myself in a place where I can make a good attempt to make the shot. We have to do the same with everything including the gospel-put ourselves in a place we can actually take a good shot and we will know of the truthfulness of it. I invite all of you to do so. An easy way to do this is to actually read The Book of Mormon, another Testament of Jesus Christ. If you haven't, you should ha because you will come to know for yourself if it's a true book and was sent from God. I already know that it is true and it is another testament of Christ but don't take my word for it. Go

and find out for yourself. Well there ya go my family and friends that's some cool stuff from my week and some good food for thought. All is well and I am so happy I get to be out here serving my brothers and sisters and children of God. Been able to have a good time gardening at meals on wheels and been getting to mow some lawns. Been good hope you all are doing great. Love you all and have a great week! 🤙