Week 35 - The importance of the Spirit in true conversion

It was wonderful to be able to talk to my incredible family yesterday. It was fun to catch up and laugh with all of you. I look forward to Christmas when we can do it again. I hope you had a great mother's day! You definitely deserve it for all you do for us. I owe so much to you and I could never thank my Heavenly Father enough for sending you to me. 

Our week was suuuper slow. We just didn't seem to have a ton of success this week and not too many people were opening up to us. It was kinda rough but we're looking forward to a week of miracles this week! 

 I like that you talked about the temples and "having the temple go through you".  I have been thinking about temples and the great blessings they are in our lives. I think about how I've lived so close to so many temples all my life and I never took advantage of that opportunity. I have met people out here who drive 2 1/2 hours to Chicago to go to the temple once a week and I've quickly realized how much I took for granted the blessing of easy access to a temple. Now as a missionary I can't attend the temple as much as I'd like, and I regret not going as much when I was home. That's something that will definitely change when I go home and can go more often.

Something else I've been thinking a lot about recently is the importance of the spirit in the process of conversion. There are so many less-active members in our branch and when I hear about how they joined the church, almost all of them were just social conversions. We can spend all our time convincing people that these things are true, even to the point of baptism, but if they don't feel the spirit testify to their heart that it's true, it won't do them any good. It makes me think of a talk Elder Bednar gave in Priesthood session in April about the importance of the Spirit when serving in the priesthood. It truly is necessary.

Well that's all I got for this week. I'm praying we'll have plenty of miracles to tell you about by the time next monday gets around! I love you Mom! Thank you for being the greatest mother a son could ask for :)

At E's baptism!

This is absolutely the LAST poncho they had at Walmart.  Haha!!

This is me and Y.  She was actually looking at the camera and making a
peace sign just like me right before this was taken! :)