Thujrsday, January 29

Yesterday Elder Whiting and I had four totally different experiences. Wow!!!

We started out early in the morning with a approximately 40 year old member of the church. He was baptized with his family when he was eight, attended church and was a deacon for some time. As a teenager he finally must have quit attending, because he does not remember preparing the sacrament. He has fond memories of his feelings as a deacon. After that he has no memories of the church and did not attend, but fell away.

We found him as the members of the second ward have been having a blitz every few weeks. Each member, (or car,) takes a name assigned to him and goes out to see if they can find them, see if they live there and what their situation is. When this fellow was found, he invited the people in and was very nice and invited them back. So we were sent back because of the situation.

This fellow has had an interesting life and know some hard times. He is married to a retired marine and has done a little bit of everything. The bottom line is that he has decided to believe in God, doesn't know if he believes in the Bible, and for sure thinks the Book of Mormon is way out of line. We listened for a quite a long time about his religious history. He has dealt a little in Satan stuff, we think which has given him a lot of confusion, but has finally identified the source of that to a point. The neat part was that as we talked to him, he began to see things more clearly and liked the feeling he had about things.

Originally "Cef" was very skeptical about everything, but settled down and invited us back by the time we left. He has a lot of learning to do and we have a lot of teaching, but we think there is hope if we are patient and work slowly. We have first got to work with him and the Bible.

The second situation we got ourselves into was a couple about the same age. She is a member but smokes and is "free" of drugs right now. He wants to learn about the church, but first of all they both need to quit smoking, learn about the church and get married. We taught them the first lesson and committed them to cut back on their smoking.

The 3rd situation was the home of a Emergency Room Physician. They live in a huge home with 186 acres or some rediculous number. They had ten dogs that we saw and I think she said there were more. Three of the dogs were inside dogs. Anyway this is a less active family whose children have not been baptized. So we sat at their table and taught two children by themselves. They are 13 and 15 years of age. Very nice, home schooled kids who are left alone during the day because their mom works in the ER also. The boy said he watches TV and plays video games all day and the girl says she reads romance novels. They must do their home schooling in the morning before the Mom leaves for work.

This is a very said situation too. But we talked to them and taught them some of the first discussion. Next week we will spend more time with them and help them to learn more about the scriptures and what they are. Right now they are very good teens, who have been sheltered from the wrong things. The girl wants to go to Seminary but feels deprived because she hasn't learned the scriptures like the other kids in the ward have. We will get them baptized and then maybe prepare them for some of the other things.

The last situation was a ward member whom we had an appointment with right after Katelyn and Luke, (the two kids.) We met him at the door the other day and made an appointment to come back the next day. He is an Elder and has been offended in the ward. Anyway he did a "skip and run" on us and didn't even bother to stay home. We knew it was most likely intentional because he was also caring for a small baby who he would have to take c are of. I think he just didn't want to face the situation.

We had a plefora of experiences that helped our testimonies grow as we thought about them and felt grateful for our own background of experiences. Also how grateful we felt for our family and the decisions they are making in raising their families. The Gospel is such a guiding light to us and if we stay close to the Lord and follow our Prophet, we will be safe under the umbrella of the Lord's teachings.