Letter from January 14, 2013

Good morning!!! Man how I love Monday's so much more than I usually would before the mission. I look forward to getting to read your emails and share how my past week went. I had an excellent week this past week and was able to get to town on writing people back from the holiday mail. My companion and I decided this week to really focus in on former investigators and other lists of members that we had. As we went through the old records a handful of names stuck out to us who we decided to go and visit. One name that stuck out was of a former who for reasons unknown to us was dropped and forgotten by past missionaries. When we call the missionaries who had last met with him they said that he would travel a lot and it was hard for them to keep lessons set with the man. We thought it'd be worth a visit to go drop by and see if he still lives there. We pulled up to his home and no one was there but we decided to sit outside for another minute and just as we did someone walk up who informed us that he was the man's brother. He told us his brother will be back from Hungry in just a few weeks so we left our number and will stop back by in a couple weeks to hopefully begin teaching him again.

   Random side story time! We did have a bit of a creepy experience this week as my companion and I were out making visits. We were going through the lists and pulled up to the house of a former investigator. We walked up to the door and just as we were about to knock a feeling came to both of us that we needed to leave. We both looked to each other and got back in the car and drove away. We stopped back the next day and nobody answered so we're still not sure why we both had that feeling the other night.... and I don't really want to find out.

   Another former that we found was a part member family with five children where only the mother was a member but wanted us to teach her children. One of the children no longer lives at home and two aren't old enough to be baptized yet so we began to teach the 9 and 10 year old kids. The 9 year old is a boy named Cameron who loves missionaries coming over and participating in the lessons. The 10 year old is a girl name Lanayll who we had been warned isn't interested in the lessons.  Never the less the lesson ended up going great as we reviewed with them the restoration of the church and discussed modern day prophets, the Book of Mormon, and the importance of prayer. We left them with a reading assignment and the 10 year old even asked for a Book of Mormon so that she could read the chapter we assigned them. We're set to follow up with them on Thursday.

   On Sunday night we met with a new investigator for our singles ward named Jamie who we had referred to us a couple weeks before. We found out that she had met with missionaries in the past but lets just say.... she had a really bad experience with them. The missionaries dropped her when they found out she didn't live in their ward boundaries and never bothered to pass her off to other missionaries.....Grr!!! Luckily a member set her up to meet with us and thus started the amazing lesson we had with her the other night. We asked her questions to see what she had been taught before and decided to begin talking about the Plan of Salvation. I love teaching that lesson and you could tell it really stuck her since she recently suffered the death of her mother the year before. She was able to ask us questions that she had and informed us that she really understands the lesson now. I was so happy to meet with her and we're hoping to set her with a baptismal date at our lesson next Sunday!!!

   The work has really picked up now and we hope it picks up even more this week. Transfers are next Mondays so we'll be getting calls this week to see is Elder Ririe will be staying or not. I really hope that he is able to stay since we get along so well and have really been building up the area that we are in right now. I hope that dad gets feeling better soon and is able to travel out to front sight. Brother Warburton texted me this morning to ask for the dates that dad will be out there and if it's all still on. I'll give you his number in another email so you can text him if it's not. I love hearing about how everyone is doing and look forward to hearing back from you next Monday. Best Wishes. Love,

 - Elder Keller Reeves