Jan 25, 2016

Well this was an interesting week.

The week started off really slow. We spent most of our time trying to
find a new investigator. 

We found one Friday who's name is Cubé. We
talked to him on his porch and taught him parts of the restoration.
Then we invited him to be baptized and he accepted. He isn't solid but
he told us to come back in a week so we'll see what happens next
Friday. 

We also have a less active that we're working with named Moroni.
Moroni is near and dear to us and we do everything we can to keep him
out of trouble but he had a pretty bad week. Just a little background
on Moroni. Moroni started his first job as a hardcore drug dealer when
he was 9 years old. He became addicted to ummm a certain drug (I
probably shouldn't tell which one) when he was 14. Moroni was clean
for 5 months when I came into the area. Last Tuesday he relapsed and
spent the entire day with us. I barely knew Moroni when it happened
but my companion was devastated. We looked up a location of an
addiction recovery program and took him to one that day. We're going
to keep taking him until he can do the steps on his own. If anyone
doesn't know the 12 steps of addiction recovery then they should look
them up on the addiction recovery website. The 12 steps encompass
repentance completely and everyone could benefit through the 12 step
program whether they're an addict or not. 

In other news yesterday was my 20th birthday and it just so happened
to be the best day of the mission yet!

Yesterday morning was pretty terrible. I was just tired and not
feeling it that day. This kind of lasted until after lunch. Around
that time I was scheduled to have a meeting with President Chambers.
The meeting helped a lot to cheer me up and I came out of that meeting
better than ever. After that we went to church. My companion needed to
leave because the stake president was doing youth meetings and wanted
the missionaries to come and talk about missionary work. Elder
Montgomery was going but he wanted me to stay so I could get to know
the members better. During church our investigator Rashid wasn't
feeling good. He said he just wanted to be alone so after sacrament
meeting he left to go home and sleep. However we had 5 non-members
just decide to come to our church. Why? No idea. But I talked to all
of them in Spanish! 4 of them live in Kearns which is outside of the
mission but one of them lived across the street. So I asked him if we
could come over and now we have an appointment with him today at 6:00!
After church we stopped by Rashid to see how he was doing. This is
what I told president min my letter to him yesterday:

Some exciting news. We have an investigator named Rashid. He is Muslum
so he doesn't know much about Christ. So we've been really emphasizing
prayer and revelation and how he can know that Jesus was the Son of
God. He really liked the idea of personal revelation and in fact he
knew that he would receive an answer. However he wanted a dream to be
his answer. At first I was skeptical but after I prayed about it I
somehow knew that a dream would be his answer. Another thing, I have
never seen anyone with so much faith as Rashid. He has complete trust
in God. Well today after church he wanted to leave because he wanted
to be alone. He went to a restaurant to eat and then planned to go
home and sleep. He was waiting for his food when he fell asleep. He
woke up,and was very excited. We saw him after church at 4:15 at his
house when he told us his dream. In his dream he saw his grandfather,
father, aunt, and brother who are all dead. His grandfather told him
that God loved him very much and that he didn't answer his prayer
immediately because it was the first time God was able to hear his
voice and God wanted to hear his voice more and allow himself to
become closer to him before he answered his prayers. He then told him
that he needed to be baptized and that the man who gave the powerful
talk in sacrament meeting needs to be the one to baptize you.

I was pretty shocked. This is the first time I've seen someone get
their answer through a dream. Now Rashid wants to be baptized and the
man who has to do it is apparently named Hermano Bravo. If it were up
to Rashid he would be baptized tomorrow but we still have a lot to
teach him. The only thing we have taught him is the plan of salvation.
So we are meeting with him today, tomorrow, and Friday every week so
we can teach him everything. He will probably be my first baptism. 

After that we had dinner with a family I don't know that well. At 6:00
we went to the Riveras for the birthday of their son that we were
invited to. When we got there I found out that the celebration was for
my birthday as well. They even had one of my favorite families from
Sandy visiting which was really nice. Hispanics make really amazing
cake so I had a very good time. Afterwards we went to a less active
named Hermana Veronica who gave me another cake and some ice cream. I
had eaten so much that I wanted to throw up but it's rude not to
finish food in Hispanic culture so I finished absolutely everything.

So that was my week. Hope everyone is doing great!

Elder Austin