Wow! What a serve

We had a way good week as far as teaching goes. We had 2 baptisms last weekend then picked up a couple of more dates the day after they were confirmed. The Lord is blessing us for some odd reason that I can not define. Fine by me! We set a couple more dates later in the week but for some odd reason they didn't want to come when the member went to go pick them up. Sad let down but what was awesome is the 2 with dates that did come to church brought along their mom and she cried through the whole meeting and asked to be baptized afterwords. A solid member explained that they have to listen to the lessons first to understand the covenant that they would be making so we will be teaching them all together this week and keeping them stoked. Only a couple of road blocks exist being that they had to stop and buy coffee which they drank during sacrament and oh ya, they aren't married. No big deal though.

I've noticed that we as missionaries focus really short term. Here the Lord prepares these people sometimes for years and we show up hoping to baptize them in a month. Not that it is a bad thing in anyway but just an interesting thought. Sometimes the Lord creates windows where if I can be obedient and I am working hard then the opportunity will produce fruits. The trick is, consistently staying obedient and always working hard on fulfilling my purpose and the windows will be opened all the more.

I had another sweet Book of Mormon experience during Gospel Principles. When we talk about the priesthood offices it always seems that (if you are like me) when we get to defining the "keys of ministering of angels" we come up with blank stares before a couple of scriptures are pulled out and we reach a level of satisfaction. I have been pouring over Alma 12 and 13 lately and it dawned on me one really sweet possibility of defining what this ministering of angels is for the priesthood office of a deacon. Considering it is the very first office you achieve (if you're not a convert) in the priesthood then it starts to make sense. When the priesthood is restored, what is something that is always revealed anew with it? The plan of salvation! How does our Heavenly Father reveal it anew since the time Adam fell?

27 ...it was ^aappointed unto men that they must die; and after death, they must come to ^bjudgment, even that same judgment of which we have spoken, which is the end.

28 And after God had appointed that these things should come unto man, behold, then he saw that it was expedient that man should know concerning the things whereof he had appointed unto them;

29 Therefore he sent ^aangels to converse with them, who caused men to behold of his glory.

30 And they began from that time forth to call on his name; therefore God ^aconversed with men, and made known unto them the ^bplan of redemption, which had been prepared from the ^cfoundation of the world; and this he made known unto them according to their faith and repentance and their ^dholy works.

Then what is the next thing Alma talks about? Priesthood. Aha! Angels and the need of the priesthood or in other words, the "keys of the ministering of angels."

We tracted out a sweet lady who seems very humble and very excited for each lesson we have had with her. She has little money so it was awesome when at Church, the day before our last lesson we had a member give us a bunch of random food. We had left it in the car 'accidently' and when she explained her situation, we hauled in the 2 boxes of food which she was stoked about. We shared the restoration with her first, then the plan of salvation and committed her to baptism in June which she had no hesitations about. The sad thing is that she is the lady that didn't come to church with her family... I do believe it is because she has a sick little one, so I still have my hopes high.

We had a way fun mother's day ward party in the park which the the 2 girls' family came to. I got like 4 ringers in horseshoes and even more important was understanding some concerns about why their mom wont get married at this time and baptized. Sadly it has been a rough situation for her but the positive thing about it is how much she has been able to recognize the Spirit from her daughters' baptism and coming to Church. She has even started asking questions and participating in Gospel principles. The relief society seems to be on top of it as well with the fellowshipping. I still have high hopes in our lesson tomorrow...

We have been teaching the young man that was kicked out of school and the last lesson we had ended at death and he was like "whhhattt.." so we hope that he will keep his appointment tonight. He said he felt a lot of the peace he was looking for as he read the book of mormon, so that was something awesome to hear.

We planned out most of this week really well so we hope that the Spirit will have a lot of more room to work with us. Obedience will be stepped up as well. I talked with the first counselor of the Bishopric for a while and I think we have rebuilt about 90-95% of the ward trust around here. Either way we will still be contacting like crazy. We have set a standard of contacting 10 ppl/day each that has yet to be broken for the last 5 weeks. We feel if we keep this up, it wont only bless us immediately but will allow the Lord and the Spirit to trust us enough to lead and guide us to those special people with windows of opportunity opened. The Lord seeks those who don't cling to excuses or give heed to distractions so I am attempting to shed the little ones as time goes on. If it wasn't for those stupid and delicious twisted vanilla oreo frosty's I would be playing on a higher level!

Well love y'all.
Thanks for the Birthday song again and stay classy.
Elder Uncle Metcalf X2