Monday, May 20, 2013

[4/15/2013] Week 5: Rock Star Investigator

This week, it's an awesome story.

Jordan is such a rock star! This week, we challenged him to pray specifically about baptism. For a while, he has known that the Book of Mormon is true and he has known that he wants to be a part of this Church. But for some reason, he was apprehensive about baptism. He wanted to feel 100% like this was what he wanted to do. He really wanted to have the desire in him. So I asked if he had prayed about baptism specifically, and he said he had not. I challenged him to do so, and with much, much prayer on our part, amazing things happened! Ever since Jordan embarked on this journey he has had signs given him by the Lord. Small things will happen here and there that are really only significant to him. For instance, he has in the past traveled to the grocery store, not knowing why, and run into the missionaries there. Or he has had an interesting dream on the same night as his mom. Or he has gotten a fortune cookie with something relatable to our faith. These are all small things that are easy to call coincidence, but Jordan assigns significant meaning to each of these instances, and Heavenly Father knows that. He prayed about baptism and minutes after he finished his prayer, he was able to find his grandmother's Bible that was given to him a long time ago, but that he had misplaced. When he did find it, he received a text from us (we send him one every morning to remind him to read and pray about the Book of Mormon), and decided to read in the Bible. He flipped to the back, and there, scrawled on the inside cover, were eleven scriptures - all about baptism. He texted us right away telling us about this incredible experience. He was so excited that he had gotten such a sure answer! We had a powerful lesson with him on Friday about the gift of the Holy Ghost and set a date yesterday for April 27th. I'm so excited for him!

Unfortunately, Farlan sort of dropped us this week. We just hadn't seen him in a while, and he left us a voice-mail saying he wants to "back off for a while". He said it was because of his wife's recent death and his hectic schedule. It was a heart-breaker, but we're definitely not going to give up on him.

We had interviews with President Wilson on Wednesday, and I took the opportunity to tell him how I've been feeling like I'm not doing enough. He gave me some great ideas for improving my personal study time and for making better use of our proselyting time. So far, my personal study time has been vastly improved and I get a lot more out of it, and the proselyting is doing alright. We've been pretty busy seeing less actives and recent converts. Here's the thing: I haven't tracted once since I've been out here. It's said to be the least effective form of proselyting, but I just feel like we're not doing enough finding. We do find a good amount of our investigators through members, but I just donno.

I'm still feeling healthy, so that's good.

It's super awesome that you're going the gym regularly. It really is a good feeling. And on top of that, you're making friends! Keep it up! I do appreciate your letters and I don't typically have time to respond, but I like staying up to date that way.

I'm glad that they've found a lead on Seth. I'm still praying for him every night. I hope the sodium is all it takes.

I love you all! Stay yourselves on the the Rock of our Redeemer and you will never fail. I have learned this week absolutely, that I have to rely on the Lord to work miracles for our investigators. I can't do it. I can only pray earnestly and fervently on behalf of them, and He has to do the hard work. And every time I've prayed for Jordan, the Lord has delivered it's amazing to me! I'm still bewildered by the way this week has gone.

Love,

Elder Martin

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