The Best Two Years

Hello again dearest family.

Sacrament meeting was pretty intense yesterday. The Nacogdoches ward is doing really well which is awesome to see. The have the highest attendance in all the stake. Elder Braford counted 28 less actives at Church amongst our 3 investigators. In PEC 30 minutes before sacrament meeting they decided to call on someone else to talk. Me. The 3 priests in the ward spoke along with their advisers but apparently they needed more filler time, so I spent 15 minutes preparing a talk about how the mission has drawn me closer to the Savior. Yet when they did call me up to speak I used none of my notes that I had taken in preparation. In fact the whole talk changed. It was pretty cool because I somehow remembered very specific points from the 3 priest's talks and tied it into one subject, yep you guessed it, hearing the voice of the Lord.

Something that has struck me as pretty obvious the past few months is the simple fact that sometimes, as missionaries, we tend to encounter a spiritual problem then halt some of the work to figure it out. As I have noticed in many applications and as mentioned in conference the best way to solve any of our problems is to help others come unto Christ. By so doing, we also come unto Him with them. Something I have to admit was, although I loved every second of conference, I wasn't feeling too good. A little pricked you could say. I had let my guard down for a couple days before conference and didn't think I needed to do as much contacting. Well the solution to the problem was pretty easy, invite others to come unto Christ. This past week was pretty awesome. We managed to teach over 20 lessons and to talk to at least 140 people. Not so difficult when I look back on it and it gives little excuses for more future success! The awesome part was that I personally was able to regain and feel the Spirit work through me to help others receive the Restored Gospel. Problem Solved.

We got 2 baptismal dates with a part member family this week. The mom and dad aren't married so it was an interesting moment committing a couple to get married and live the law of chastity for the first time on the mission. The spirit prompted the instant commitment to baptism for her daughters at the beginning of the lesson and I wasn't going to let that prompting get away from me again like I did in Frisco (Felipe and Vanessa had to ask me if it was alright if they could get baptized.) The commitment that came out of my mouth - "how would you like to have your daughters baptized by proper priesthood authority?" the response with wide eyes - "that would be awesome." This is the same mom who I think I mentioned last week who's countenance was changing rapidly. She has been reading the Book of Mormon and came to Church for the first time in Nacogdoches. The fellowshipping was awesome on the ward's part. Once again the Spirit managed to find an avenue to work through me and it felt sweet, and most desirable.

We had a couple of intense lessons this week with some investigators. Both over priesthood and authority. We and missionaries past had been letting the 'bible study' go on too long and it was time to 'eat the frog' as some missionaries call it. Establishing the fact that there is one true Church with the right authority seems to have a devastating effect on some who actually preach at a Church. It was easy to bring it down to one topic that I seem to be falling more and more in love with - The Book of Mormon, the keystone! It is interesting though, seeing how many people do believe the Book of Mormon to be true, but when it comes to Joseph Smith and authority, the shenanigans tend to happen... "Keystone, keystone, keystone." We did meet a guy in the park reading his bible so we started to talk to him. He asked about the '3 heavens' and we made the references in the bible to him yet it was an interesting thing, he turned to his study bible to figure out what the philosophies of man were and what certain scriptures "really meant." Good heavens, as Grandpa Metcalf put it, the spirit will teach you more in 5 words than all the world's knowledge. Have to love 1st Corinthians 4:20

We were out tracting on Saturday and knocked into an unknown less active. He was a bit hostile but let us in. After asking what was keeping him from Church the response was 'Joseph Smith.' That rang a bell in my head that I remembered from Rockwall when I was being trained. Elder Johnson taught me to find the real concern. Almost always it's a commandment not being kept and the issue over doctrine is an excuse. We found the real concern and talked for a while and he invited us back. Interesting to note that one of the real concerns was over the Godhead and the nature of God. Satan is winning an amazing war right now that is becoming more obvious. If he can screw up the true nature of God, namely that He is our Father and we are His children then interesting things begin to happen. Especially in one of the greatest defense systems we have - prayer. We have to know who (not what) we are praying to! Now check out the Bible dictionary on prayer and it starts to make a little more sense why Satan really pushed the council of Nicea along its way to what produced such a devastating and false doctrine that has most of the Christian world wondering who or what God is.

Cue in one of President Uchtdorf's talks about the love of God and it makes even more sense.

Well last week since Elder Woodward was sick in the district and Elder Runyan needed me as a companion to email his family I was able to download all the conference talks onto my iPod the day after conference. How awesome is that? Now if I could just find enough space on there to put on the audio book of Jesus The Christ which I found on lds.org, Technology is awesome.

Thank you for your prayers
-Love Uncle Elder Metcalf