Dear Family and Friends,
Wow! It has been a super great week!! I still don't have any word on the visa, but I have a feeling it's coming this week... I dunno though. This last week went by super fast, I will try to remember some of details.
Wednesday was amazing. I loved it so much!! There was an emergency splits, so I went with one of our Zone Leaders, Elder Barrow and Elder Plessinger went with Elder Cooper. We got two new investigators in our area... And we taught like 3 lessons, and we saw like 4 other families. It was really cool because we talked to this girl who was new to taking lessons as well. I really enjoyed it because we just worked super hard. He has a really positive attitude and that in my opinion makes all the difference in missionary work and life. A good buddy of mine... AKA the green machines heart and soul, Elder Hawks often says, "attitude is half the battle" it is so true. When we surround ourselves with people who make us happy and strive to be happy themselves I truly think that is when we see miracles. Elder Barrow and I saw this one girl who hasn't been to church or a YSA activity in years a looooonnng time. We met with her on the porch and talked to her about some of her favorite T.V. Shows. She was really enjoying it. We then read a scripture with her from the Book of Mormon and I invited her to come to FHE on Monday and she said she would, then we set up our next visit with her on Monday right before FHE so we could all go down together. That was super cool, and when we left Elder Barrow told me that he had never seen her so happy before. That was neat.
Friday was really neat, we went and saw Grandma D and took Sister T with us. It was really cool, we talked to D about the temple and about her parents who she always talks about. We talked to her about working towards going through the temple herself and then for her parents. We helped her understand why temples are so important for families.
On the way home Friday night, I had this impression out of the blue to go and visit this lady named K Who is never home because she works a ton!! She has a little girl and is divorced with her husband. It's really hard on her and we hadn't seen her in weeks. I just felt like we should go over. So we walk up to her apartment and sure enough, no answer. We went back to our car and there she was with her little girl. She had just pulled in. We told her that we were looking for her. After we just kind of said that we wanted to make sure she was doing okay and if there was anything that we could do for her. Right then she broke down and cried and asked for a blessing. Her divorced husband has just disappeared and now her little girl has absolutely no father figure. Plus she has two jobs and always took the little girl to the dads... She just was really scared and worried. It made me so sad to see the little girl who has no idea what is happening and this mother who is working so hard to make ends meet. We gave her the blessing. I really felt that it was so neat that we were able to be there. The prompting from the spirit to go see her was so quiet that I will be honest... I didn't recognize it at first. I just felt we needed to. I think that this is mostly how we feel the spirit. There are always those times when we feel it super strong, but a lot of times it really is a still small voice. The more we act on those small promptings the more we will begin to recognize them. I think a lot of this life is learning how to listen to the spirit. This is something I am working on every day. I am so grateful that I was able to have that experience.
Saturday was crazy! Haha... We had a FHE lesson with these two older couple and I brought cards from a members house and taught them Russian Rummy! Haha! That was way fun and we had cookies and crackers and cheese! After we went to this guys house and I got to play his 2300$ guitar! He plugged it into the amp and man... IT WAS AWESOME!! it made me miss playing the guitar.
Sunday was stake conference and was super fun! :) stake conference was awesome! We heard from Elder Anderson and President Monson. One of the messages from the 70s was super good too! He talked about how especially in Portland it rains every day. How we need to seek out the light. There are always going to be storms in our lives big or small they will always be there. Instead of sitting back during those storms we need to seek out the sunlight. Or as my big bro would say, we need to make it happen. When we show our Heavenly Father that we are willing to seek him out he will help us. I really like the analogy of the rain every day. It's so true.
I am reading in the scriptures about the 2000 stripping warriors. As I read it this time I really felt Helaman's love for those boys. He even called them his sons. I really thought that it was amazing how they kept fleeing from the Lamanites, and finally had to face them. It made me realize how much Helaman cared for them. Immediately after, he numbered his people and none were lost. It made me feel so grateful that we are all numbered as well. That during our trials Heavenly Father is mindful of us. When we are in the service of our god we will never be lost.
I love you all so much! Have a great week and keep the faith!!
Elder Redding
No updates this week?
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