Gordon's Missionary Blog: Letter and Pictures

Dear Family,

Life is great in the service of the Lord! I would like to share about Sister Jones and how she is doing after baptism. She has told us that she has felt even more peace and been more calm since she has received the gift of the Holy Ghost. The gift has truly blessed her and you can tell the fruits of it in her life. She understands even more now in lessons than she did before. She detailed in her responses and comments. Her testimony and commitment is solid as she tells us that she is not leaving this church for she has found the truth. She had an experience where someone was bashing on the church and she defended it. She simply told them what they were saying about the church was not true and that they should seek to understand and find out for themselves what the church is all about and what we really teach. She attended the baptism for the Spaulding's daughter this weekend and church as well. None of our investigators came to church this week. With our area some of the current investigators we've been teaching for awhile have stopped progressing after many efforts to help them so we are moving on and have found some great new people to teach. We found one named Juliette who had been taught before and now is ready to work towards baptism. She has cleaned up her life and has been looking for the truth. She has built up a habit of studying from the bible and has read through it several times recently and now is starting to go through the book of Mormon. She accepted baptism. We also found and taught Asa who accepted baptism and has been reading from the book of Mormon daily. In setting up an appointment with him we asked him if we could come by on Wednesday and he said no that's too far away so we set it for sooner. He has opposition from his mother but he is overcoming it because he has such a strong desire to follow Chirst. We found a lady named Nefloya a few weeks back and this week we were able to come and teach her husband Travis. He had been taught a lot, studied, and came to church several years back. He really wants to come closer to christ and he opened up to us and we were able to answer some of his questions he has had. We also found a lady named Lorraine who was given a book of mormon by Elder Whipple and Elder Tye but they weren't able to ever come teach her. She was looking for her book of mormon and found it the day before we came into contact with her. We are going to see her on Wednesday. We gave her a Family track with the proclamation on the family and she loved it. With some of these new investigators they have plans on coming to church. We hope and pray they do. I love you all! I leave my testimony that no matter what happens to us, what challenges we have, what life throws at us, or what anyone says that this church is true! This gospel is true! God is our Father! Jesus is the Christ! They love us! With faith and trust in our Savior things become better! The Spirit whispers this is true! Again I love you!

Love,

Elder King

P.S. - We do not know Asa's father. He doesn't live with him. His mother isn't too thrilled about us teaching him and is not interested herself but she said it was up to Asa and this is really what Asa wants in his life. Fred helped in the teaching process some for Sister Jones. It is better for a member to perform the baptism because when the missionaries leave there is still a connection for the convert with the member. The Sobers were recently baptized too and are in the gospel principles class with Sister Jones. Plus it is a great blessing for Fred to have that experience. I thought it was awesome! Renee is making preparations for her to move in. Some Rasta's might believe in Chirst and others not at all. Basically everyone has there own beliefs out here regardless of what religion and then attend what ever church or claim a certain belief if that makes sense. If they believe in a religion they might now follow or believe everything that is taught. It's a little weird and doesn't make a lot of sense. It's like saying I'm LDS but I don't believe in Temples. Structure and standards here are out the window. People do whatever they want.

Elder Anderson and I