Hey Everybody!
It's been a little while since I've been able to write home,
because as you might have guessed, life has been pretty crazy! And this week
doesn't seem like it's going to be slowing down at all! We have 3 exchanges and
another crazy thing I'll talk about later.
Mom, I promise
I'm trying my best to not run myself ragged! I'm actually doing pretty well!
There are definitely a lot of things to do, to worry about, and a lot of things
that don't get done anymore, but I'm healthy and happy! I'm also ready for
spring! I never thought it would happen, but I'm actually excited for it to
start getting back into the 90's! Even the few times it's gotten up into the
60's, I'm still a little chilly and need a sweater!
I’ve been excited to tell you about our investigator, Allan. We
met him about two weeks ago. He was a referral from another set of YSA
missionaries. His girlfriend got baptized at the first of the year, and that's
what got him started! Until recently, he was atheist, but because of some
things that have happened to him in the last few months, he now believes in God!
It was a pretty rough start for him though, because he's really hard on himself,
and even though he believed God was there, he didn't feel like God liked him
very much. He would take the littlest things as a sign of Gods displeasure. He
was progressing well, and wanted to be baptized, but he needed to come to
church this last Sunday, and he was really struggling. He was really down and
discouraged because he felt like he'd been trying so hard to keep the
commandments and had been praying to feel Gods love the last few weeks, but
hadn't felt it yet. He was planning on not coming to church, but we spent 45
minutes on the phone with him Sunday morning reading scriptures with him and trying
to help him see how much God loved him. It honestly felt like a battle for a
soul! We finally convinced him about 20 minutes before church, and one of our
awesome members went to go pick him up! Then all of the lessons and talks in
church were practically written just for him! By the end of the meeting, he
just kept talking about how much he could feel Gods love! I love experiences
like this so much! Opportunities to change someone's entire outlook on life!
Heck, their entire eternity even! He should be getting baptized this weekend if
all goes well.
Also, as you may have heard by now, there has been a change to
the missionary schedule as well as the key indicators (certain things that
missionaries keep track of such as lessons taught and new investigators found).
None of the changes are very major, but to missionaries whose whole life
revolves around these things, it's a big deal!!! A lot of missionaries are kind
of flipping out about it, so Elder Wightman and I, and the MSTL's will being
making a little road trip around the mission to visit all of the zone
leadership teams and discuss some of the changes and how it will affect the
mission, as well as have a council about some of the things that were discussed
in the recent worldwide mission broadcast. That, plus 3 other exchanges this
week, is going to make for a crazy week! Our mission tour day will probably be
a really long day, haha.
That's about all the time that I have. I love you all!
Elder Excell
Q&A – 1/30/17
1.) We'd love
to hear more about Miley. When, in February, will she be baptized? -- It's
actually kind of sad. She was so solid, and then the next day, she dropped off the face of the
earth. We tried and tried to get
in touch with her, but she's gone, :( On the bright side, we have someone who's supposed to get baptized this
weekend! His name is Allan. I'll
tell you more about him in the other email.
2.) Did you go
on splits this week with other missionaries? -- Yep! We usually go on at
least one exchange per week, sometimes as many as three.
3.) What is the
furthest away you traveled this week? -- We went down to Lake Havasu City
for exchanges this week. It's a cool
little town!
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