May 19, 2014

This week was great and awesome! I learned in the scriptures about how to receive divine help.

Mosiah 29:20 (how to be helped by the Lord)

Also, I learned a bit about being a member missionary. We learn from the sons of Mosiah's example. They all served missions in their home lands (in other words were member missionaries) before they served missions in other lands (full-time mission). One thing that I would change is I would have done more missionary work before I left on the mission. (See Mosiah 27:32-37; 28:1-2)

It rained a lot this week. Since we're on top of the mountains, the clouds like to hang out in our city. That's why we have such heavy fogs. And it's getting pretty cold too! I bought a new sweater and that helped out! It's nice and thick and it has cool stripes, which probably don't add to the warmth but I like them anyway.

One night it started raining. We were without umbrellas or anything, and we didn’t want to wet our sweaters, so we took them off and walked around in our white shirts in the freezing rain. It started to rain really, really hard, so we decided to take shelter in a grocery store. The lady there felt bad for us and loaned us her umbrella and gave us some rolls :) There are always wonderful people who helps us out :)

Also, I continued teaching English to Vanda. She's taken a liking to the Book of Mormon and she's read all the way through Mosiah. That's pretty good for two weeks! She has lots of specific questions about the book and stuff, and it's pretty cool because she's smart and understands what she's reading. She just faults a testimony that the book is true. But I am confident that anyone who reads the entire book of Mormon will gain a testimony that it really is a true book.

I did something else new this week- I did that father's blessing thing when you give a child a name and blessing in sacrament meeting. Because we need lots of member records, we invite all of our recent converts to let us present their children before the congregation and create a record for them. So this week we presented Nitiele's children (they're with her in the picture I sent of her baptism) I named and blessed her son, Kaiqué. I'm getting lots of new opportunities to serve in this branch!

Lastly, we had the baptism of Milena this week. She's the second child of 6. The rest of her family, after the service, also expressed desire to be baptized, so we'll focus on helping them prepare this week!

Smile and be happy!

Elder Jasperson