"And The Rain Came Tumbling Down!"

With RadioActive Soda

This last weekend since about Thursday has been pretty damp here! Which is good because Temecula needs rain! The only bad part about it is that missionaries still have to work and walk around outside in the rain...thank goodness for umbrellas! But on the bright side. Because I'm in the Pauba ward, which is very large due to lots of back country dirt roads, we have a full time car! So we don't have to walk between appointments and get soaked!

Now on to the rest of the week!

Went on a couple exchanges this last week. They were both really good.

The first one was with my good friend Elder English. You know. That missionary I was just with about a month ago. So that brought back some memories. We had a good time reminiscing about the days in Carlsbad. And made a few references during the day to stuff that happened while in Carlsbad. While on exchanges we had a lesson with our investigator C, and talked to him about the importance of studying the scriptures with special emphasis to study the Book of Mormon so he could find out for himself that it is true. When we asked him to pray about the Book of Mormon he said he had done it already a while ago and believed it to be true...which I was not expecting. So we encouraged him to pray about it again to reconfirm his belief that it is true. And I hope he does get that witness, and then acts on that witness, because he needs to change a few things about his life before he can be ready to become a member of the church.

We also had dinner with a cool family, and Elder English invited them in our dinner scripture thought to try to go a week without being repetitious in prayers. Elder English thought of this because him and his companion are teaching a few investigators who he said say the same thing in every prayer. This bugged Elder English, and then when we taught C, Elder English said a prayer to start the lesson...and realized he said a lot of the same things every time he prays! So he invited this family, and himself, to try to go a week praying non-repetitiously. Which is very hard!

Had another lesson with our investigator M. And that went pretty good. When we asked her if she had prayed about the Book of Mormon she said she hadn't because she felt weird about it. She said that she was comfortable praying for physical things like safety, or to find something lost, but she said it seemed weird to her to pray for something that was completely spiritual based, as in getting an answer through the Holy Ghost about whether the Book of Mormon is true. So we encouraged her to pray this week, and talked for a while about different ways the Holy Ghost might answer her, what feelings she might have. She said that she would do it so I guess we'll see what happens!

Elder Stevens and I had a cool miracle happen last Sunday! None of our investigators showed up at church which was a bummer, but as we were heading off to High Priests group for 3rd hour (they asked us to come in and do a "missionary minute" thing) a sister from the ward that had the 1-4 block pulled us aside and introduced us to another lady that she was talking to. This lady is a nonmember that I believe had experience with the church in the past, and came today with the question that she posed to our ward mission leader, "What do I need to do to join this church?" So we got her name and number, and our WML got a sister to take her to Relief Society, and we are going to be meeting with her sometime this week! So that was super exciting! And is the kind of stuff you always hear about but I never really expected it to happen to me!

Anyways, that's about all there is for this week. Since it seems like a lot of my week was about prayer. I'm going to share for my scripture Jesus Christ's teachings on how we should pray. Matthew 6:5-7 says, "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking." He goes on in the next few verses to outline a simple prayer, but I really like the message in these verses. Don't pray to try to show off your beliefs, pray to Heavenly Father, not to be seen of men. Be sincere and speak from your heart. If we look in the next verse it says God knows what we need before we ask, but because He won't force things on us, He waits till we ask to bless us. I love that we have the ability to pray and to communicate with the all-powerful Creator of the Universe. It is such a special gift that we should use as much as we can.

Love,

Elder Wixom