03.28.11

Fam dam, Hello. Well it is good to here from you all. I just barely got back from an adventure in the mountains. I fell down a few times but just like the song "I get knocked down but I get up again," I got up again. The mountain has a lot of ticks in them. But I found and burned all the ones that got on me. They died painful deaths. We had a baptism last week. She just barely got out of the hospital 5 days ago. She had bad fevers and bad headaches. She was in a crash about 2 months ago and has been having those fevers and headaches ever since. But she accepted a baptismal date and we were able to baptize her on Saturday. This last week, Elder Ellett and I were very happy at Sacrament meeting. We got there a little bit discouraged because the investigator who promised she'd go to church made up an excuse. And when the meeting started, we had 3. But there was a whole family that showed up about 5 minutes later! Do you all remember that lesson I told you about where we just went in and started talking about the BOM? That lady and 5 of her kids came! She has 8! And like 20 grandkids. And she is the head of the whole family. What she says, everyone else does. She said she's coming next week too! She has a daughter in the hospital. The mom is about 60 years old and raised 8 kids as a single mother. She is very Catholic. We went and visitted her daughter in the hospital after church and she said that it's incredible her mom went to church because, "no one can get her out of her own church. The Catholic church." I know that it wasn't us. I know that it was the spirit. I believe that the feelings and impressions the spirit gives are one of the most convincing if not the most convincing power on earth. We assigned her Ether 12 which talks about faith and miracles. And she said she felt so calm and peaceful after reading it. She said it gave her a lot of comfort. They have called us to just go to there house and pray for the daughter in the hospital. She is pregnant and the liquid in the stomach that surrounds the baby just left for some reason. I think it's pretty easy to start thinking, "Wow, I'm a stellar missionary. I did all this work." I think it's really important that as a missionary, you recognize where the root of all the success comes from and who is in charge of this work. We're simply the instruments in the hands of the master. It's definitely important to stay humble. I really pray and hope that I'm here for one more change with Elder Ellet. He is so humble and fun to be with. I tell him he's going to be AP later on. People here have a common belief that anyone who leads a church can baptize and that all baptisms are correct if the person has his/her heart right. It's definitely an apostate doctrine. So I like using the key example to solve that. I pull out my keys and ask them what a key is used for. And they say to open doors. So I say if a key allows me to open doors, can I open your front door with the key I have right here? No. All keys are different. And then we invite them to pray after testifying we have the keys. I'm way excited for General Conference! YEAH! I'm excited to hear from Jeffrey R. Holland. I know he's got some amazing mesage prepared. Well, not too much to report on. We're still working hard. Thirteen investigators came to Sacrament meeting! YES! That's a big difference from 3 last week! YEAH!!!!!!!!! Love you. Elder Goodwin