Did I Say Last Week Was Good? Must Mean This Week Was Awesome!

Hello again everybody! This week was so amazing!

First off. Last Monday we played a really funny game for a District activity called "What if" where everyone gets a piece of paper, writes any "what if" question they want, someone else randomly gets their paper and answers it, and then you deal out the papers again, and one person reads their "what if" then the person next to them reads their "then..." to answer it. It is a really funny game!

Got to go on exchanges this week with Elder Green, and it was really good. We spent a lot of the day knocking doors and trying to stop by potential investigators. It was funny because for a bit of the day we were with their Ward Mission Leader (WML) driving around (they drive around a lot because they are in YSA), and Elder Green and I both had so much trouble staying awake! I think Elder Green did fall asleep a couple times while we were driving, and I almost did a few times. But it was really good, and I met a couple cool people. We had dinner with the WML of the family ward that they cover, and that was fun because it was his and his wife's two year old son's birthday.

The best thing that happened this week, and the main reason why it was such a good week is that I saw one of the biggest miracles I've seen on my mission! We were going by D again for our weekly, the less active member that we stopped by that let us in and is coming back to church, and we get in there and his roommate's daughter M is sitting on this bed in the living room. Now, every time we had gone by the bed was there, but before last week we had never known whose bed it was. So now, we meet M, who lives there with her dad, along with her 4 year old daughter, and she is just sitting on her bed with lots of college scheduling books, seeming like she is just going to mind her own business. We start teaching our lesson, which was the second half of the Plan of Salvation, which means everything from the Atonement to the Kingdoms of Glory. And as we are teaching, we see that M is listening in, so we start to involve her in the lesson.

At the end of the lesson, D said that M actually asked if she could listen in to hear what we were saying, and so we ask her if she has any questions. She was like, "Yes, I actually do." And tells us that she has the question of why we are here on Earth, which she has asked a lot of people from other churches, and has never gotten a good enough answer. So we go back and teach the first half of the Plan of Salvation, from Pre-Earth Life to our life on Earth, after laughing a bit because that is what we taught last week. She really liked it, and agreed with what we taught her. We invited her to come to church on Sunday, but she said that she has work from 12-4, so she couldn't go to ours (the 1-4 block), but she did say she could go to the 9-12 one.

The next day we had Zone Training meeting, and that was really good. We talked a lot about trying to focus more on working with members to find people to teach, rather than relying only on talking to people on the street or knocking doors. And that was good. But afterwards was really awesome! Because we got to have a church tour with M! We had Bro. Jacinto (our WML) and the Sister missionaries there as well to meet her, and it was really good. Then later in the day we had a really fun dinner where it was us, the Sisters, and the YSA Elders all there with the family (they have a kid in YSA). It was a very fun dinner!

Saturday we got to do service for a member of the Carlsbad 1st ward, or rather, for a friend of theirs, and that was really good. But not much else happened then.

Sunday on the other hand! That was a really busy day! We got to go to first, the 9 o'clock Sacrament meeting with M, then Elder English went with her and a member of C1 to Sunday school, while I went to our missionary meeting with Bro. Jacinto. And then the Sisters went with her to Relief Society while Elder English and I went to ward council. And then we all went to our normal 1 o'clock church! It was such a busy day full of church meetings! Not to mention afterwards we had dinner with the Bishop's family!

Then lastly, yesterday with Martin Luther King Jr Day. First we got to go do some service for a member and help them move. That was fun, I always love doing service! And then dinner was awesome, and yes, because we had another lesson with M there. We had dinner with the Lampreys, and got M to come because Sister Horne (one of our Sister Missionaries, the other one is named Sister Higley, and I served around her in San Marcos) thought that M and Sister Lamprey would get along really well. And they did. In fact, they even have the same birthday! But anyways, after dinner the Sisters shared a really good video about how trials make us stronger, and then Elder English and I taught the Restoration lesson. It was so good and M really loved it all. It was funny, at dinner she actually said that she was a "Christian Hippie" because she loves nature and all natural food and stuff, and that she was converting to a "Christian Mormon Hippie." It was such an awesome dinner and lesson!

Well, for my spiritual thought I'm going to share the video that the Sisters used for their lesson. It is called "The Refiner's Fire" and it is a really good video. It's on mormonchannel.org and is about a woman who talks about some serious trials she goes through in her life, and how they have made her stronger. It is really such a powerful message.

Love you all! Thank you for all of your support!

Love,

Elder Wixom