Elder Austin's Journal Letters from January 7 - January 12, 2014

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Today, we had district meeting in a city named Ayr (Air).  It's an hour up the coast and the drive is absolutely beautiful.  There's a sister in our district named Sister Moore.  She's from Queen Creek, but unfortunately she is not related to Jim or Scott Moore.  Anyways, after district meeting we went on exchanges.  I was with Elder McAllister here in Stranraer.  We didn't each many lessons but we made some good progress with potentials.

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

We exchanged back in the morning and had lunch with Sister McGillvery, a less-active member.  She's very knowledgeable in the gospel.  The only reason she went less-active is because she got into anti-mormon material, especially about the temple ceremony.  She's starting to come back though which makes me happy.  Later tonight we had a good FHE with a part-member family.  The mother is a member, but the daughter isn't.  She wants to be baptized though!  Hopefully we can make something happen.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Today was a really productive day.  We saw a lot of good people and taught a lot of good lessons.  I think our hard work is finally paying off.  Hopefully it can continue to progress in this area!  The highlight is the lesson we had with the Corrigan family.  The mother and one of the daughters is active. The two other daughters and the husband is not.  We're focusing on the husband because he just recently went less-active.  We taught about family prayer and how it makes a difference.  It ended with everyone saying a prayer and the Spirit was strong.  The women were in tears and you could tell the husband was impacted.  It's nights like these that remind me of why I serve.  I love seeing families come together.

Friday, January 10, 2014

This morning we had an intense lesson with an English family.  The husband had a college degree in Religion, so it got really deep and intellectual.  I could wheel and deal with him for a while, but there was a point where I lost him.  We gave him a Book of Mormon and some stuff to study.  Hopefully a miracle happens there.  Tonight we saw our Czech investigator named Martin and he's going through a rough time.  We shared some scriptures with him in his Czech Book of Mormon that left him in tears.  Hopefully, we can continue to teach him, he needs it big time.

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Today we saw and taught a lot of less-active members.  It was very productive and we taught quite a few lessons.  Our branch president came down tonight and met with one of our investigators.  She is our top investigator, but she's been living with someone so she can't get baptized.  But she's deciding to marry this guy, so if she progresses she can get baptized now.  That made me very happy.

Sunday, January 12, 2014

It was a day full of disappointments.  We were supposed to have about four investigators at church today, but none of them showed up.  Ahh, agency sucks sometimes!  Haha is that bad to say?  Oh well, we did have some less-actives there which is always good.  I don't know if you guys are doing the same thing, but we're studying the Old Testament in Sunday School starting with Moses and Abraham. I find that part of the scriptures very interesting.

We ran into a couple of mean atheists today while knocking on doors.  I'm grateful for my patience and calm temper that I've developed.  My companion got heated so I had to calm him down.  Like Dad always said, "nothing gets accomplished when you're emotional."  I also proved a born-again Christian about how her doctrine conflicts with the teachings of the Bible, I probably shouldn't have, but I was kind of fed up with her.  I don't think she appreciated that because she slammed the door shut.  I'm really knowledgable in the scriptures now, but I have to be careful sometimes so I don't offend people.  I'm grateful for our church actually making sense and following the scriptures.

Love you!