The Best Way to Learn What You're Made Of

Week of April 1-7, 2013

The mission is an interesting time in life.  It’s fun but hard.  It’s uplifting but it’s heavy.  It’s engaging but tiresome.  It’s the best way to learn what you’re made of.  General Conference was AMAZING.  I encourage all to go back and read Uchtdorf’s talk on light and dark. This is a formula for rising out of despair and walking in Christ’s light.  I learned so much from the prophets this weekend.  I’m so grateful for conference.  Although, I have to admit, I missed crawling into my Dad’s lap and taking a nap during conference.  That was one of the best parts of last year’s general conference. 

The weather here’s been crazy.  Some days it’ll snow.  Some days it’ll be so windy I feel like I’m riding at a 45 degree angle just so I can fight the wind.  But all in all it’s okay.  The wind though, it just kills.

 We have quite a few investigators.  The progressing investigates, which are the ones that are reading and doing the things we ask them to do are as follows.

The Hills.  Brother and Sister Hill and Jordan, their 16-year-old son.  They’ve been working with the missionaries for quite a while but we need to get them to go to church.  Sister Hill has been reading the Book of Mormon and is ready to be baptized, but I don’t know about Jordan and Brother Hill.  My problem is knowing whether they are sincere or not.  They have a baptism date, but we’re going to have to push it back because they aren’t coming to church.

The Plazon Family.  Ross, who is the dad, originally was mad at God, and had decided to never go to church.  But we’ve been talking to him, and he’s just eating it up.  It’s been amazing to watch.  Brother Plazon is an awesome guy, and his wife, Sister Plazon, her name’s Christy, have chosen to be baptized!  And they have a date for the first weekend in May.  We’re helping them towards that. 

Sister Olsen.  All of her kids are baptized and are awesome members of the church.  She is not baptized, and neither is her husband.  They’re waiting for Brother Olsen to stop smoking but he’s having a really hard time.  He works away from home and doesn’t have that support group that he really needs.  Sister Olsen has warned us not to push.  We’ve been encouraging her to quietly help her husband make the right decisions.  Austin Olsen, who is the oldest, was just recently ordained an Elder and we’re hoping that might maybe add into the equation to sister Olsen being baptized by him.  She really needs to be baptized.  You can tell that whenever we go over to her house, her eyes are tired, but when we start talking about gospel principles her eyes become a lot happier, and she becomes more engages and a better person even!  She just really needs to be baptized so that she can have the Holy Ghost with her so that she can rise out of this tiresome state. 

We also have three little kids.  Ashton and Tristen Miller are brothers.  Their father is a member and hopefully he’s going to be able to baptize them. And then there’s Taisia who’s a daughter of a less active couple.  She wants to be baptized and it’s so great watching her and seeing her eyes light up whenever we talk about baptism and she’s trying to understand everything, but we really have to bring everything down a bit and make sure she understands everything.  She’s so cute.  She’s so adorable, and just loves life.

 We also have a couple of other investigators.  There’s Alison Cook and another guy named Kirt.  They are kind of in a rut, not really being able to progress, but I have hope

for them.  Alison is someone we found on a corner of the street and she started talking to us.  We’re actually meeting with her today, the 10^th, and taking her on a church tour which should be great.  She’s been going to this other church and they actually preach anti-Mormon, but she says she’s not satisfied with the spiritual side of things there, so hooray for her!!  I’m really excited for her to hear the gospel and improve her life.  Sister Cook has two little ones, and she’s trying to get on her feet.  The church has helped her out a whole lot and we’re hoping that she’ll be able to be receptive.  Kirt is on probation, so he can’t be baptized until he’s off, but he also really loves the gospel.  He’s been reading the Book of Mormon.  His wife’s a member, but not active and we’re really hoping to help them get back on their feet and make righteous decisions.

 

I don’t know if you guys really care too much about our investigators, but there they are.  I know you, Mom, wanted to hear about them. 

 

A really cool thing happening in our mission is something our Mission President is doing.  He’s asking us to flood the earth with copies of the Book of Mormon.  He’s asking each missionary to go out holding two Book of Mormons, so four in all, and to give them away, to literally flood the earth with copies of the Book of Mormon.  I’m excited about it.  We’ve already given out five, and it’s just been awesome.  We really hope that they will get back in contact with us.  We put our name and number on the inside with a mormon.org card and we’re hoping everything turns out alright.

Something I’ve learned this week.  I’ve learned that it’s hard keeping your fire going.  It’s hard pushing forward every minute of the day.  And although we sometimes fail at it and don’t do things that we should, I know we really need to work on it and improve and get better. 

I’m very grateful for all of your prayers.  Thank you for all you do to help me and my family.  God Bless, and Hazzah For Israel!!

Elder Eldredge