Feb. 16, 2015
This week was a good week, that contained a lot of wonderful
experiences.
The first good experience was this Tuesday. We had
our personal interviews with our president. It was a great interview and my
mission president always knows what to say to build me up and keep me going.
Also that same day, president Ames came up to me and told me he wanted to go
visit a man in our ward named Walter Gamen. Let me tell you a little about
Walter:) He has been coming to church for a long time, but has not yet been
baptized. His wife and a couple of his children are very strong members of the church.
He has a couple of hurdles that he has not been able to over come for some time
now. One of them is the Book of Mormon, another one is that he thinks that if
he joins the church he will be abandoning his non-member children. He is the
nicest man, and you would never be able to tell that he is not LDS unless you
asked him:) So anyway, this Tuesday President Ames came up to me and told me
that Walter Gamen has been on his mind a lot this wee and he got the feeling
that Walter is very close to getting baptized. I got in touch with the Gamen
family and they said we could come over, sister Gamen was also sick and asked
for a blessing from President. The whole time before the exchange with
President I was very nervous, because President said that he felt that we
needed to invite him to be baptized. I prayed like crazy, asking Heavenly
Father to make this meeting go well and for us to be able to get Walter finally
baptized. Well the time came and President and I went over to see Walter. We
started out by giving Sister Gamen a blessing. When President asked who she
wanted to give the blessing, she didn't have a preference. Then President Ames
asked me if I would give the blessing. It was a very sweet experience and could
feel Heavenly Father's love flowing through me into sister Gamen. Following the
blessing President was very straight forward with Walter and asked him right of
the back to get baptized, he unfortunately declined, but he did open up to us.
He said that when he has been teaching primary with his wife the scriptures
they have been reading are really touching his heart. He also said that he
wants to go to lunch with President this next Monday and tell him his last
concern:) After this I believe he will finally enter the waters of baptism! I
was also able to share a scripture I know that Heavenly Father needed him to
hear. It was an awesome experience. I am so grateful for a inspired and worthy
mission President. This same night elder Phipps went with a member of our
bishopric and saw this less-active family and had a really good visit. This
family has been really hard to meet with, and the husband was even there! They
said that they are going to try harder to come to church. Tuesday night truly
was a night of miracles!
Another good thing that happened this week
was that we had another great visit with Pablo. We went over Thursday night
with the bishop and his wife. We started out the meeting by having dinner with
them, they had both just gotten home from work and had not had the chance to
eat yet:) After dinner we didn't have to much time, but we were able to talk to
them about the spirit world. One of Pablo's concerns was eternal families,
because he thinks that by joining the church and getting married that he would
be abandoning his two children who are living with his first wife. While
talking about the spirit world we really focused on how everyone one on earth
will get a perfect opportunity to accept the gospel or not. We also talked
about the parable of the laborers and how each one, even the ones that only
worked for an hour got the same reward. It was such a wonderful lesson, and the
spirit filled the room. Pablo is such a special guy, and I know that someday,
whether it is today or in the future, he will be baptized.
Also a quick update on Denisse, she was the one
that got baptized last Saturday. She is doing very well. She said that every
day she is seeing the power of the Holy Ghost in her life. She even broke up
with her boy friend, which is a very good thing:) It is so amazing to be able
to see her already being blessed from being baptized and becoming part of
Christ's church! I am very excited to start the new member lessons with
her.
This week we also had a wonderful stake conference.
We had a member of the 70 named elder Stoddard come and speak to us. He was
quite the character, and had everyone laughing during the adult session
Saturday night. Sunday he reined in his humor and gave a powerful talk on the
Atonement and the importance of forgiving. He said that forgiveness is what
completes the healing power of the Atonement a lot of the time. It was a
awesome talk! We are also doing this awesome Book of Mormon challenge in our
mission. Starting last Thursday we as a mission are going to be reading the
Book of Mormon in 65 days. This is how long it took Joseph Smith to translate
the Book of Mormon. We are also as a mission handing out 10,000 Book of Mormons
in the same time period. It it an amazing challenge, and I know that it will
bring miracles to this mission. The Book of Mormon is one of the most powerful
conversion tools we have, and if anyone will choose to pick it up and sincerely
read it they will not be able to deny its power.
Well I love you all and hope you had a great Valentines
Day!
Love,
Elder
Griffin
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