I'm sorry to hear about Alese. Tell the Cunninghams I said hi. There has been a lot of death around recently it seems, but I agree, it is a little easier with the knowledge of the Gospel. Well I hope that I have enough time today to adequately report on this last week. It was a jam-packed week, full of teaching and finding. We had great success. Including MRL's we were able to teach a total of 27 lessons, and we had 14.5 hours of tracting. We were busy.

Monday started off with member lessons. We taught one at dinner, and we were invited to teach a family home evening to one of our ward missionaries as well. We spent the rest of the evening trying to hunt down some of the unordained members from the ward list.

Tuesday during our District Meeting we learned about teaching MRL's. This is a subject that I have really seen work. It is a great way to build member trust, and increase the work. As you teach the members they see you as master teachers and trust you with their friends, and as you do you best to teach members you find others along the way. I had Elder Davidson do the training, he was the one who taught me what I know about it after all. It went well, and the district has already improved in this category. After that we were able to do some service with the Lyons. We helped her to clean up her yard a litte. We stacked wood, took out the trash, and even helped her put up a giant cardboard movie cutout. Due to time we weren't able to teach her after service, but we were able to talk with her a little as we helped. We did some more tracting that afternoon, with decent results. We have a few more potential investigators that we can follow up on this week, and hopefully be able to start teaching them frequently. After dinner, we had a lesson fall through, and so we went to see Wendy M, who we had found a week before. We were able to get in and teach her because we had our WML with us. She has been studying with the Jehovah's Witnesses, and had cancelled her meeting with them that night, but let us in when we came. We saw her again this morning, and she told us that they are getting really nervous about us meeting with her. We were able to answer some more of her questions, and teach her a little of the Plan of Salvation. She is so anxious to know the truth. She kept asking what would happen to her if she died, and how she fit in to all of the things that we believe. She will be baptized soon.

Wednesday we did some more tracting. We were also able to meet with Tom M, he is less active. He knows the answers, but has no desire to change. It is tough to work with him, because he doesn't want to do anything. He reminds be a little of myselfe before I decided to serve a mission. I knew the answers, but didn't want to do anything about it. We were also able to stop by David and Melissa, and share a message with them about enduring to the end. They haven't been to church in a while, due to sickness, but they also said that they haven't really been making it a high priority. That night we were able to meet with Kris S. She has two nonmember children, one of whom sat in on the lesson. She is less active, and due to scheduling conflicts will be attending the Maplewood ward. We called the sisters, and passed her off to them so they could teach her.

Thursday we were able to see Kelly. She is also someone we found a week or so ago. We had a lesson cancel, and so we took the member over to her house, and were able to teach her the restoration more in depth. Bro K bore a great testimony about prayer, and she was excited to "try it out" for herself. That night we were able to do splits with some of the members in our ward. Elder Lott went and taught Dirk, who has continued to read and pray. He said that he had felt the Spirit, and wanted it more in his life. They invited him to be baptized, and he said that he would when he recieved an answer on the Book of Mormon. We asked him to pray about date.

Friday was more tracting, with several potential investigators. Just before dinner we stopped by another one of the unordained members, and were able to find out a couple things. One, he doesn't live there. Two, his nonmember parents do, and they had had contact with the Church before, and enjoyed it. They invited us back to teach. Our lessons for that evening cancelled, and so we went out and did some more visits with one of our ward missionaries. We were able to see one unordained person. We didn't actually see them, but their wife, who is a nonmember said that we could stop by this week and see him. Hopefully that is another teaching opportunity.

Saturday we had our coordination meeting, and were able to give the Bishop the progress record right after. We were able to see Tom H as well. We got a text message from him about 5 minutes before the lesson asking if we could do a different time, and I felt that we should go anyway. We did, and we were able to get in and teach. I think that he was starting to get cold feet a little, and that we were able to help him see that this is nothing to be afraid of. We had a great lesson with him, we talked a lot about prophets, he had a hard time understanding, but we were able to answer his questions. We had dinner that night with Jason Whitten, and one of our ward missionaries. We were able to talk with him about his reading, and answer a few more of his questions. After we left he talked with our ward missionary, and asked him a bunch of questions. I have seen a lot of progress with him. We were also able to see the Williams, and teach the Gospel. We did a good job helping them to understand the importance, and how it relats to them. We finished the night with Clancy G. We taught him about the resurrection, and read with him from the Book of Mormon. He came to church again, and has signed up to feed us dinner.

Sunday we had PEC, we were invited, and the first thing they talked about was missionary work. We went over some of the names on the progress record, and what we could do to help them. We had another lesson cancel, but were able to make some visits. We found a less active member who is from Farr West. What a small world, because no one knows where that is, let alone being from there. We had a great meeting with him. He is not interested in coming back at this time, but I think we were able to help him feel the Spirit. We had dinner that night with the Watsons, they are a part member family, and they were really fun. They pray and study the scriptures as a family everyday. I get the feeling that someday he will get baptized, and his son, who is incredibly spiritual, will baptize him. 

Thats about all for our work. Elder Lott and I are doing great. One thing I learned on Sunday was: If you want to love someone, do things for them to show that you love them, and then you will come to love them. What a true statement, it is hard not to love someone you are serving.

 

Love, Elder Schultz