How are you all doing? I hope all is well. This week was pretty good but kind of lame as well. We have a baptism Saturday. His name is Gilbert and I think that I wrote home about him last week. He was having trouble because all of his family is Catholic, especially his mother who is basically on her death bed. We gave him a blessing of comfort that he would be able to go through with what the Lord had told him to do. He seems pretty excited about his baptism. He asked Elder Hillebrant to baptize him and me to confirm him.
We had splits this past Thursday. We were finally able to get some members to go out with us. A member and I went to go visit one of our investigators named Carlos. It went really well (even with me leading the discussion cuz Elder Hillebrant was in another appointment). Carlos is awesome. He really gets it and he has felt the Spirit. He has family members that say bad things about the church to him (mostly Galatians 1:8) but he defends the church, it's awesome. He said that they are really closed minded but that it's really hard on him. I told him that lots of people have that problem. That friends and family members sometimes don't understand or that they are not prepared to receive it yet like he is. I told him that everyone will have their chance to either receive or reject the gospel. I think that helped him a lot. He said that he has been seriously contemplating baptism and he said that its something that he wants to do. He said, on the verge of tears, "I think it's something that I want to do, I want to be cleansed and I just don't want to do bad things anymore." It was awesome. we are meeting with him this Tuesday and are working with him to increase his faith that Joseph Smith was a true prophet and restored the gospel. We are also working with him to quit smoking. One thing that was really cool was that the member that came with me to Carlos' could relate really well. He is a recent convert and, like Carlos, grew up Catholic and went to Catholic school. It's been awesome how well member lessons have worked out. We had one other where the member we brought was a recent convert who was baptist, which is what the investigator is.
We haven't been able to teach Renee or Michael. Renee is out of town and she said she will call when she gets back. We have seen Michael a couple of times and invited him to the Trunk or Treat that was on Saturday. He came with his whole family but he came at 5 instead of 5:30 so he went home when he didn't see anyone there. He didn't go to church because there was a HUGE storm Sunday morning. Yesterday was fast Sunday because next week we have Stake Conference. Testimony meeting was awesome and the Spirit was really strong. Me and Elder Hillebrant bore our testimonies and lots of people seemed to enjoy it.
One last quick story before I go. There was a talk in the MTC that we watched by Elder Bednar. It was all about recognizing the Spirit. He said sometimes we wait for this big manifestation or we wonder if the thoughts we have are the Spirit or if they are just us. He said that as long as we are being good, keeping the commandments, and honoring our covenants, anything that is good is from God or from the Spirit. One night we had all our appointments fall through and nothing to do. Elder Hillebrant said let's just go visit the Patricks and he had me text them to see if we could go over there. Anyway, we went over there and just visited and shared a quick message. Before we left Brother Patrick said that him and his wife had been having a horrible day. The had a bad day at work and got in a contentious argument with another driver on their way home from work. He prayed for the Spirit to be able to re-enter his home. 20 minutes later we sent him a text asking if we could come over. He said we were an answer to his prayer. It's really cool how the Lord works. Anyway, I love you all and hope you are doing well. Thanks Dad and Chels for taking care of the letters and such. Oh, and happy birthday Jeff!
Love,
Elder Steed
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