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

"That's my son, and I love him" story

10.26.15

We started out this week by having interviews with President Ames. It

was kind of stressful at first because we had to fill about 3 hours of

time with trainings, but it ended up going really well. Most of the

trainings were focused around building relationships with the bishop

and ward council. We also had a really good council about how we can

better place copies of the Book of Mormon. Our mission is again having

a Book of Mormon challenge. We are reading 20 minutes everyday and

placing one copy of the Book of Mormon everyday. We are hoping to hand

out 8,500 by Christmas.  Our mission President has three things that

are important when placing Book of Mormon: I know,(bear testimony)

will you, (commit them to read and pray) and when can we follow up on

your reading. It's so simple, but a powerful approach to placing Book

of Mormons.   We had some really good discussions. I love this zone

already, we have a lot of amazing missionaries.

   This week we also had the chance to go on exchange with the

assistants. I got to go with elder Tanner in his area. We had an

amazing exchange! We were able to teach a recent convert as well as

two of their investigators. My favorite lesson we taught was with this

guy named Mike. He has struggled with drug addictions for a long time,

but is doing his best to clean up his life. During our lesson with him

the spirit was really strong and elder Tanner bore his testimony to

him and told him that God needs him to be in the church so that he can

be a missionary to those people who have similar struggles. During our

lesson I could feel that this man was going to get baptized, and I am

almost positive that he felt the same witness. I love the hope the

gospel brings into people's lives that are lost and in a bad place. It

was a wonderful lesson to be part of. Also during the exchange this

member meet us at a fast food restaurant to have dinner with us. When

the member got there we noticed he had another man with him, and I

just assumed it was his friend. Well as we got our food and started

eating we asked how they knew each other. They told us that they had

meet only 20 minutes ago. The man, whose name is Cory, told us that he

had been coming home from work on the bus and had missed his regular

stop for some reason. He started walking home in the rain. The member

saw Cory walking home and asked him if he could give him a ride. What

an awesome member!! Elder Tanner started teaching him about the gospel

using a temple pass-a-long card and then transitioned it into the Book

of Mormon. Cory said he would love a copy to read. He then went on to

tell us that he believes that this meeting happened for a reason. He

said that he had gotten out of jail a little while ago and was now on

parol for the next 5 years. He decided that he needed to change his

life. We got his contact information down and will be giving it to the

elders where he lives. It is so cool to see God's hand working in this

man's life. If he wouldn't have missed his stop, and if that member

would not have offered a ride this man would have missed the

opportunity to hear the gospel. It was a pure miracle!

  This week we were also able to attend our stake conference. We had a

member of the 70 attend. The Saturday night session was amazing and

the spirit was so strong. President Ames spoke and shared 3 very

inspiring stories about following the spirit. I want to just share one

that was very touching. He said that he was out visiting investigators

with some missionaries and had gotten soaked from the rain. He had an

hour before he was going to go out with another set of missionaries

and he decided to go to the gas station to get something to eat and

dry off a little bit. While he was there he say a man who looked

homeless. He got a prompting to buy this man lunch. At first he

ignored it and went in to dry off. After drying off he came back out

side and he didn't see the man anymore. Then off to the right he saw

the man making his way towards the dumpster. President Ames finally

decided to follow the prompting and went and bought him something to

eat. When he offered it to the man he at first kindly refused saying

that he didn't want to take his lunch from President, but President

told him that he had bought it for him. The man was very grateful.

After excepting the food the man looked at President's name tag and

asked if he could pray with him. President Ames put his arms on the

man and prayed with him. As he was getting back into his car he heard

a voice in his head say "That is my son, and I love him" It was such a

powerful story about the reality of God and how much he loves each one

of his children. There was also a man who got in a car wreck and it

ended up paralyzing him. He told us off his experience

and how he was able to get through it and still stay positive. It was

so inspiring! It was an incredible conference:)

  This has been such a great week and I have truly been spiritually

charged! I love you all and hope you have a happy Halloween!

Love,

Elder Griffin

Arlington & Chelsy the car

Ward Mission Leader and Family in Woodland Springs

10.19.20

This last week was a little crazy, but I loved every moment of it! It

started with a good last P-day in Woodland Springs, and then we went

and said good bye to the O'briens. It was really hard, but I know that

I will be able to see them again someday and hopefully I will be able

to go to Katy's baptism:)

 My new companion is elder Smith. He has been out for 21 months, so

he is nice and seasoned! He is a great missionary, and we have had

tones of fun these last couple of days. I has been such a blessing to

have a companion who knows how to do missionary work. He is from

California, and is a super funny guy. I have a feeling like this is

going to be a really good transfer.

 So far I am really liking my new area. We have already gone on a

couple of member exchanges, and all of the member we have gone out

with are awesome. We have been able to visit some pretty cool people

and it is getting me excited to be able to teach them and serve them.

Also elder Smith and his old companion baptized a 17 year old named

Ja'quintman the day before transfers, isn't that the coolest name you

have ever heard, he seems like a really good young man. We are working

on getting him home teachers  and making sure that we help him develop

a relationship with the young men. I also meet a cool recent convert

how is coming up on his year mark of being baptized. He is so cool,

and has a great love for this gospel. He is working on preparing to go

to the temple and he is super excited. He has some health problems,

but is still one of the happiest people I know. Right now we also have

a baptismal date with another 17 year old named La'marcus. We had a

short lesson with him this week and talked about baptism and talked to

him about us teaching him the rest of the missionary lessons. He has a

great desire to learn. He also works at Smoothie King, so hopefully we

can get some sweet discounts on smoothies!!

 This week we also had quite an adventure with our car, which we

named Chelsy:) The first day I got hear, we went over to this

neighborhood in our area to visit some people and do some street

contacting.  Well after working for a couple of hours we started

walking back to the car. As we walked up to the car, elder Smith

noticed that the driver door didn't look like it was shut all of the

way. He then looked down and saw that the driver side door was smashed

in! Apparently someone had backed into us and then drove away. The

door was so smashed, that we couldn't get it open. Well we called the

mission office and then called the police. They were super busy,and it

took the cop an hour and a half to get there! We had to fill out tones

of paper work stuff and had to send in pictures of the smashed door.

After that we took it to get an estimate at a car shop. They told us

that they would have to replace the whole door. Also after the car got

hit, the car would make these occasional jerking motions when we would

speed up and slow down. We took it in to the dealership, but they said

they wouldn't be able to work on it until Monday, so we decided to

just wait until Monday to take it in. Well the jerking got worse and

more frequent. There was even one point where we were pushing the has

pedal and the RPM dial was going up, and you could hear the engine

revving but there car was only going like 10 miles an hour. After it

did that we decided to just take it in. Well as we were getting on to

this frontage road it did it again! The speed limit was 40 and it

wasn't letting us go over 10. Luckily we were pretty close, so we just

kept revving it until we turned into the dealership. It was pretty

crazy! We get to be on bikes for a week, but this area is pretty easy

to bike in. It has been quite the adventure with this car:)

 I hope everyone has a happy Fallish week!!

Love,

Elder Griffin