Miracles

I know that miracles happen. I have been a part of miracles ever since I came on my mission. God lives, loves us, and wants His children to be happy. As a missionary, I have had the wonderful priviledge of being a participant in miracles. This week was great.

Elder Hansen and I were out tracting earlier in the week. How tracting usually happens in our mission is that you tract a street or an area once every six months or so. There are a few streets that we have written down to go and tract this month. We basically just go down the list and choose a street to go tract that is somewhat in the area that we will be in for the day. We went to the street that we had chosen and locked our bikes up as usual. When we get to a street we usually walk a certain direction when we get there. For whatever reason, we decided to go the opposite direction this day. After walking for a while, we knoced on yet another door to try and speak with someone. The man that answered the door opened it up with a "Hey! How's it goin' today, guys?" Speaking to someone who is openly friendly to us is kind of a rare thing. I started to tell him who we were and what we were doing and he told us that he already knew who we were and that he was very familiar with what we were doing. I asked him if he was a member of our church and he told us "Kinda." Bingo! Less-active member! We started to talk to him to find out a little more. His name is Paul and he grew up in the church back in St. George. When we was about 18 he started making his own decisions and he fell away from the church. Since that time he has had all kinds of ups and downs in his life. Lately, things have gone downhill for him pretty severely. He was engaged to a girl that he had a kid with and she left him. He's had struggles with drugs and alcohol. He's lost a couple really nice jobs. And he's been struggling with emotional problems. He told us that he had been praying the day before we knoced on his door for help. He has been wanting to start coming back to church , but hasn't had any way of doing it. Basically he had prayed for help, gone to sleep, and woke up to us knocking on his door. He was stoked that we were there and he asked us for help to get to church on Sunday. Of course we obliged. So, Paul came to church yesterday for the first time in 9 years or so and he loved it! Even though he has not been going to church for a while, he has carried his scriptures around with him and he brought those too. I am really excited for him. I feel a strange connection to Paul. I swear I have met him somewhere before, he seems so familiar. Maybe he and I were best friends in the pre-mortal existance? That would be pretty sweet! : )

We also picked up two new investigators. One of them is a potential that has been in the area for a long time but has constantly been flaking out on appointments...until we taught her. Her name is Rickee and she is soaking everything up. She told us, "You know, you guys are alright. I've never had anyone explain the Book of Mormon to me before. I like you guys." Our other investigator is the friend of a recent convert in the ward. We taught him the first lesson at a dinner appointment. The Spirit was really strong. I pointed it out to everyone during the lesson and they all agreed that they could feel something and it felt good. After the lesson, John - our new investigator, came back in to the room and told us that the day before he had been talking with his girlfriend about the Holy Ghost. They had been wondering if it was real and how it felt to have the Holy Ghost with you. Then, with a big smile on his face, he told us that when I was telling him about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, he felt it. Wow!!! It's times like these that make my mission the best experience I've ever had in my life. When the light goes on in the eyes of the people you are teaching and they look at you and share their testimony, even if they don't know what a testimony is, the Spirit confirms to my soul each time that what I am doing is what Heavenly Father wants me to be doing. I love this work!! I don't want it to ever end...

Some other information for you is I went to a baptism back up in Penn Valley on Saturday for my investigator, Nick Anderson. That was awesome!! I was able to see my boy, E. Garner, again. Man, I never thought I'd say it, but I miss the country. PV was a good area. We have a baptism this Saturday for our investigator, Samantha Tanner. Sam and her sister, Shayna, were scheduled to get baptized, but Shayna isn't ready yet. There is still a possibility that she will get baptized too, but E. Hansen and I both feel that she needs some more time. Basically, she's lost interest ever since I came to the area. She had a crush on the missionary that I replaced and that was more or less why she was investigating. Dangit! I'll keep you posted on what happens.

Hope everyone has a good week! Elder Crowder, I don't know if you're going to get this or not before you die, but good luck back in the world man. I don't envy you. I'll see ya in a few months!

Be mighty everyone!
Elder J. Hammer