Everything going fine here in Camas, Washington. As far as investigators go, we have worked with this family a ton. The wife would totally be baptized, but her husband has some concerns. His biggest one is blacks and the priesthood and how everybody seemed to know that it needed to be changed, but we had to wait for a prophet to receive revelation. We have revelation. We have been emphasizing that the people just weren't ready for that, but he is pretty set on his beliefs. We will keep working with them and I know that eventually they will get baptized, but just not right now. Elder Livingston is like ready to baptize them right now. It was funny, we invited them to this FHE barbecue thing tonight. We said that there will be a zip line and all this other fun stuff. The dad was like "If I went on the zip line, Livingston would cut the rope when I went over the water and then would try and baptize me before I could out!" HaHa. He is so funny and he was only joking, but he has some issues that he still has to work out.
Nick is definitely getting baptized soon. He has a basketball court in his house and he loves to play, so we are going over there this week. His mom is ordering pizza and we are playing and teaching at the same time. It will be sweet!
We didn't get to teach Ilse this week, she was really sick, so we will teach her next week. As far as finding goes, we get most of our investigators from referrals. We visit a ton of less-actives and they always have a bunch of nonmember friends. Also, we went on exchanges with the AP's and one of them served in this area so we got a bunch more people to teach that he taught. We try to stay away from tracting as much as possible. We will keep letting the spirit do its thing and hope that things will work out for the best.
Thanks for the housekeeping stuff. Elder Kunz's mom is awesome. She wrote President Taylor a letter that he read for zone conference that made everybody cry. Ask her about the story of a lady getting in a plane and seeing two missionaries if you ever talk to her again. I guess we can be friends on Facebook! :-) I have seen a bunch of stuff about doing good on social media along with President Bednar's talk. I will try to do better with that.
It hasn't started raining here yet. Supposedly it is supposed to be late September or early October when the giant cloud just comes and doesn't leave for another 9 months. The weather has been really nice so far though.
So we had a zone conference on Thursday. I learned so much! President Tayllor is so awesome. He basically said that we are working with members and less actives. We are hastening the work of salvation, not baptism. It was sad to listen to all of the missionaries going home. It made me think of who I would be when I come home. We talked about how missionaries make up 0.001% of the world's population. We read Alma 13:3 and talked about how we must have been righteous in the pre-existence to be here.
So my favorite prophet in the Book of Mormon is the Brother of Jared. The two words that describe him best are faith and trust. He was totally ready to cross the sea in total darkness if that was required. He trusted in the Lord that He would open up a way for them to make it. I wish that I was more like that, just trusting that everything is in the Lord's hands and He will make sure that we are successful as long as we are following Him and keeping His commandments. And then in Ether 2 it talks about how he got chewed out by the Lord and after that he went to work.
So I had kind of cool experience this week. We stopped by this couple's house that is in our ward boundaries. They are active and we wanted to ask them to help us with a lesson later int he week. The husband just blew us off and was kind of rude about it. I left there with a very low opinion of them. As we were leaving, the husband waved us down and said that he wanted to talk to us. We visited with him and his wife for a while and their whole countenance changed. They said that they would be happy to help us out with a lesson. We got their whole story of how they met and when they got married ant their children's lives! As we were leaving, the wife said that her grandson is 19 and totally hooked on marijuana. He is dying to go on a mission but he is having a hard time quitting. He is in a different ward, but that ward has sisters so he can't go with them. She wanted us to do what we could to help him. We called up the zone leaders and they said that would be fine if we took him, so we called him up and he is coming with us next week! I still don't know what happened with the husband, but he was totally different person. I know that this church is true and Jesus Christ is our Savior. He is truly the one behind this work. I am so thankful for Him and the chance that I have to represent Him. I love you all and I appreciate your support and prayers.
Love: Elder Reiley
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