July 9, 2018

Fam, 

Teodoro and Edin are maintaining their progress really well. Teodoro had his baptismal interview Saturday and it turned out positive. The only thing standing between us and the 14th are the programs. Everything is already planned and assigned. 

We are still meeting with Edin daily. We've been able to have most of the Branch missionaries involved as well as nearly all the YSA aged members. He is reading well, talking with the members he lives with about the gospel, and has been teaching his family back in Guatemala the things we teach him. Things are about as ideal as they can be. 

We did a practice baptisimal interview and he bore his testimony throughout the whole process and it was quite awesome. He got a little hung up on the word of wisdom, he explained the word wisdom instead of the word of wisdom, we clarified things up and he fixed his mistake. 

Thursday we meet Elder Barry, the new Spanish elder. We now have 8 missionaries in the Spanish branch. About 30 minutes before they arrived in Grand Rapids we finally finished carving out the area boundaries. The Stake president sent a proposal which we then slightly edited and then shared that with President Brennan. 

We've worked a little with the stake president on matters concerning the areas as well as the Branch. He impresses me, his understanding and awareness of the Branch and the stake shows a lot of experience and capability. 

Elder Barry and Guerrero have been bunking with us in our apartment since then. Elder Magalei and I cover the northern portion Grand Rapids and everything north of the city in the zone/stake. We likely will be moving to a new apartment so that we don't live like 10 miles outside of our area, so heads up on that. Not sure when that will take place but President said he wants that done as soon as possible. 

We had a pretty fun experience with this one lady this week that spotlighted the importance of the spirit in missionary work. We were talking on the door step with this lady we had spoken with a few days earlier. She was busy but we still had an opportunity to talk with her. She didn't seem interested in a lesson so we just kept talking and taught basically the entire restoration on her door step. We had an opportunity to talk about how the restored gospel of Jesus Christ really helps families be happier and have more direction in their lives and that really invited the spirit. We invited her to read Mosiah 2-5 in the book of mormon and think about the question, "how can I have a happier/stronger family."  We asked her if we could pray with her and she consented. Elder Magalei offered the prayer and after he closed I asked if we could come back in a few days to talk more about the homework we left her. The spirit was able to touch her heart in such a way to change the "oh I'm busy" into a "please come back."  

The Book of Mormon is a super cool book. The doctrine and Covenants is also super cool but that's a different topic. To think that a 20 something year old with 3 years of an education could produce a volume of scripture the length of the Book of Mormon littered with literary complexities, significant biblical parallelism, perfect continuity in theme, story and doctrine, all within 60 days with the kicker being that he dictated it is absolutely insane. Looking at the photos of the original manuscript also brings a level of awe on it own. Aside from the later added punctuation and a handful of scribal errors there isn't a single correction, just straight text. It truly is a marvelous work in a wonder as mentioned in Isaiah 29:14. 

The new Preach My Gospel is also super good. In the lesson about The Gospel of Jesus Christ is makes the point that the Book of Mormon contains the clearest presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, found anywhere in scripture. I read that and realized it is so true. 

Just read any one of the following four chapters in the book of mormon
2 Nephi 31 (pg 113)
Mosiah 18 (pg 181)
3 Nephi 11 (pg 426)
3 Nephi 27 (pg 458) 

And try to find a comparison of clarity anywhere in the Bible.

Also when are we going to be able to get a printed copy of the new Preach My Gospel? Preferable the small size.