Another week

November 21:

That was a fun week. The highlight i think would have to be the zone conference we had on wednesday.. quite the spex.. for those of you scratching you head slash and or being appalled that means spiritual experience. Elder Gong is quite the disciple; very... uhh.. its hard to explain.. you just feel great in his presence. To be completely honest, the zone conference itself wasnt anything super special.. i mean it was great dont get me wrong, but nothing happened that was amazingly out of the ordinary.. it was just, good. You felt good. You left feeling uplifted and you got to see what someone was like who has consecrated their life for longer than only 2 years is like. He taught us about the saviors visit to the nephites and then Joseph Smiths first vision again.. put them together and use it in lessons in order to help investigators feel the spirit in our lessons. Pretty cool. He had us count how many times the Savior mentions baptism in 3 Nephi 11 and 12:1-3 which is 19 times.. it was funny.. he then asked what people thought about it and everyone was going off on baptism baptism and BAPTISM in the first lessons... yes, that is true, we need to be talking about baptism.. i raised my hand: "I liked how the Savior told them to 'come unto him and feel the prints in his hand' first, and then invited them to be baptized.". A little something we forget sometimes thats so important.. they need to have a reason to want to be baptized or believe first. Thats our biggest job. You can talk about baptism all you want, but until they have a reason to want to do it, whether they understand those reasons fully or not, they wont do it. After the conference, Elder Gong and President Smith only had a time for about 6 interviews and i was lucky to get to interview with Elder Gong.. ill tell you about it later, but it was incredible.

In other things, Elder Furr and i are working on things in our zone and we want to be better about using the scriptures in our lessons, from day 1. The way we were talking about it was that we know people use scriptures in teaching the Plan of Salvation and the commandments and stuff, but its a little more difficult to be using them for the message of the restoration.. but we practiced it and it works. Our goal is to be able to not say or answer any question or do anything like the manner with our investigators but only through using the scriptures. We figured that if we could do that, the ivnestigators would be touched by the spirit on their own and see the importance of the Book and would 1) stop asking us and go straight to God and the scriptures and 2) gain a testimony quicker. Its nothing thats super new because its already in preach my gospel and the prophets say to do so, but its a little more difficult than i thought. But, as a testimony and a sign that that was correct, the Lord placed someone in our path who, is quite possibly the most prepared person i have ever met. To put it simply, in the short space of 3 hours, he introduced us to someone from New Zealand, Finland, England, and Missouri.. 1 of those he had just barely met hahah. After all that, we taught him about our message and he had a bunch of questions about baptism and about prayer and being a member and life after death and since we had studied and prepared for this that morning, we answered everything by using the Book of Mormon... you know what he said? "Wow so the Book of Mormon can answer all my questions right? Thats pretty miraculous.". The things he was saying was just so.. miraculous. We were almost laughing in the lesson at how many of his responses were in direct relation to what we had talked about in study.. kinda hard not too. Turns out he has a record in one of the other ELders area books, but all we saw was a lot of previous Elders who quite frankly had no charity. To be completely honest. They said he was weird and that he just wasnt willing to do anything.. i dunno, maybe it was true then, but seriously, by their works shall ye know them, and his works say that hes prepared and wants to be baptized. We did commit him to baptism, but he didnt accept yet just because he wants to feel fully ready. He will though. Hes going to FHE tonight. LEGIT.

Other than that, stuff happened, and it was good. haha.. yeah i know that sounds bland. Oh, i was sick (still kinda am) and now everyone in both zones who were at that zone conference are now sick too hahaha.. i was the carrier! Snap. Elder Furr was hating his life this morning.. ill show you a picture of what weve been suffering later, this cafe doesnt have sd readers.. but ill tell you that it was very long, super slimy, got stuck in the sink drain, and may or may not have come from my nose...

Love you all, this work is true and the Book of Mormon is the word of God. Go give it to someone. Get it done!

Elder Gudmundsen