Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Sharing Light and Truth at a gas station

This week Chelsy is sadly still in the shop getting fixed up, we truly miss her. The guy at the garage called us and told us that they had to re-build the whole transmission! Luckily it was still under warranty:) We are hoping to get it back early this week. It has been good to bike again though, it allows us to talk to a lot more people, which gives us more opportunists to place Book of Mormons. It also rained like crazy a couple days this week and we were able to go and work in it and got totally soaked! It was quite the adventure. 
  At the start of this week we had an awesome district meeting. One of the sister missionaries gave a really good training on the importance of the Book of Mormon and really emphasized how the Book of Mormon was written for our day. She also shared a cool story about President Ezra Taft Benson. There was a point in his life where he really felt the power of the Book of Mormon and wanted to share it with his neighbors, but then he started coming up with a lot reasons why his neighbors didn't like him, he had an annoying dog that barked at all of his neighbors, his yard was not the most well kept yard and so on. Well finally he decided to just do it. After a while he realized how easy it was, and ended up giving everyone on his street a Book of Mormon. He didn't stop there though, he started giving it to everyone at his work. Out of all of the Book of Mormons he handed out, 7 people ended up getting baptized! It showed me how powerful the Book of Mormon is in converting people to the gospel. I challenge all of you to get on your knees and pray for an individual/family that you think would be ready to accept a Book of Mormon. I promise that if you do this God will answer your prayer, and you will be able to find a family to be able to share the Book of Mormon with this week.
 This week we were able to have a cool experience handing out a copy of the Book of Mormon. It was Wednesday night and we all of our appointments had canceled, so we went out to try and street contact/visit potentials. Well after talking to a couple of people we went up to a gas station to call a member back that we had missed their call. As elder Smith was on the phone, the store manager guy came out to smoke a cigarette. He started asking us who we were and I started talking to him. He was the nicest guy.  A couple of minutes later a customer walked into the gas station, so he had to go back inside. Before he went in he asked us how much longer we were going to be here. We said we had to get going. Well after he went in I just didn't feel right about leaving. It had been a perfect situation to share the gospel and we had let it go. We decided we would go in a share a Book of Mormon with him. We both felt kind of awkward and uncomfortable going back into the store, but we did it anyway. We looked around for a while at the drinks and candy selection, until all of the customers had walked out. We then went up and offered him a Book of Mormon. We bore our testimony of it, and invited him to read. He was very grateful. I am hoping to go back in a week and see if he has had a chance to read it. I absolutely love it when God puts people in our path that we can share the gospel with. There are so many good people that need our message!
  This week we also started teaching the brother of a member in our ward. His name is Pete. He has been coming to church for a couple of weeks now, and so elder Smith went over with an elder while on exchange and asked if Pete would like to hear the missionary lessons. He agreed. We went over yesterday and had a wonderful lesson with him. He has had a very rocky path, and is now ready to turn his life over to God. His sweet sister took him in, because he didn't really have a place to live, and has been bringing him to church with them. During the lesson he was agreeing with everything we said, and the spirit was strong. The spirit was the strongest when we shared the first vision with him. A warm feeling filled my body and the spirit once more testified to me that Joseph Smith really did see God and Jesus Christ.  We asked him how he felt after we shared it, and he said it was amazing.  He accepted the challenge to read the Book of Mormon and we will be seeing him this Thursday. He is a very sincere man, and I am excited to be able to continue to teach him!
 I want to share one more small little thing before I close. It was fast and testimony meeting this week in our ward. The first person that shared their testimony was a girl who had Down syndrome. She bore the sweetest testimony of Jesus Christ. She then sat down on the front bench and would give everyone who would bear their testimony a hug. She was so sweet and it was a very special to be part of. Elder Smith said that she does it every week. She is a great example of being Christ-like. 
   Well I love you all and hope you had a Happy Halloween!

Love,


Elder Griffin