Blue Angles and Lost Keys..‏

Time moves by way to fast! Elder Douglas and I are teaching A LOT of people and it is awesome! We have 6 right now that are very capable of being baptized.. They are all so awesome.. A great family of 3 that we are working with.. the ward loves them everyone fellowships them and they know the church is true! It is awesome! Another that we are teaching is the son of a member, and the mother was inactive at the time he grew up so he was never baptized and has a lot of difficulty in his life. He is in his 40s and just wants change and peace in his life.. He is awesome so we are working closely with him. Another lady that we are teaching is really struggling.. She knows the church is true, she knows the Book of Mormon is true, and every time we see her she makes great progress and has good fellowshippers, but she doesn't come to church or quite understand the importance of coming to church. Every time she makes great progress she faces great opposition. It's tough because she has already had a witness of the Holy Ghost that these things are true, but she still is reaching out looking for more.. so that's her struggle but we love her and her family.. and the last of the six is James Johnson. He is great! He listens when we teach and comes to church all the time, he is getting baptized on May 1st! The Gospel is perfect! I am so grateful for it.. So this past week was interesting as they really all seem to be in missionary life.. but we came off conquer and had a blast! It started on Monday..

We were in the process of moving to a new apartment yet again because our previous one was really smokey because the person beneath us smoked and so we began to smell like smoke and people began to notice it at church and well we just smelt way bad.. So over the past 3 weeks or so we have been getting prepared to move into a new apartment in the same complex. Finally on last Monday we got to move almost all of our stuff but didn't quite finish. We had at this time the key to both apartments. On Tuesday we had a district development meeting at the church (it was great!). And Elder Douglas and I were going to just be working in the area so we didn't even go back to the apartment. Well at around dinner time we came speeding in on our bikes to the apartment and our ride for our dinner appointment was there so we just locked our bikes up and rode with him to dinner.. Well after dinner we made it back to the apartment and Elder Douglas asked me if I had the keys.. I looked at him and laughed a little thinking he was joking while realizing I didn't have the keys.. So I had lost them.. we did however have a key to our old apartment which did not have our beds or clothes or really anything in it, though it did have a couch and our area map and stuff.. so after praying we made some calls and went out almost the rest of the evening just trying to find out where the keys could be. We stopped at the church and couldn't find them, that was a big bummer we thought for sure they would be there, but we couldn't find them.. Anyway we got back to the apartment without the keys and didn't have much choice but to call another member and search some more. So we went out with Brother Moody around 8:30 trying to find the keys.. It was really important to find them because it had a key to the church on them.. so that was bad news.. anyway we still could not find the keys.. We got to the old apartment.. which was pretty much empty and planned for the next day and I slept on the floor and Elder Douglas on the couch, after all it was my fault the keys were missing so it seemed only fair.. We had no blankets but I did have a South Carolina flag so I used that.. Elder Douglas used his suit coat.. it was probably a pretty funny site.. Anyway. For our early morning exercise, we just put our ties back on and suit coats and rode our bikes for about an hour and a half just trying to find where the keys could have fallen.. never found them.. We went to the management office at our apartment complex which was now open and finally got a key to our apartment and that worked out good, we got to eat and get ready for the day... That night we had missionary correlation meeting and as soon as we got there I saw the bishop outside and went to him and said.. "Bishop, we have some bad news, we have lost our keys which also had a key to the church building on them." He kind of smiled and told me to describe the keys and said that they were in his office on his desk and that someone had put them there and he didn't know whose they were..

It was a good experience as I realized that we need to have that kind of faith and motivation to find new investigators.. to pray constantly to be disappointed when it's not where we would hope it to be and then to move forward with ideas and prayer of where it could be. We needed more faith in finding investigators similar to the faith we had in finding the keys.. However even after all we did to pray, and act and work to find the keys we never did find them and instead they were simply handed to us.. Likewise, and I have a testimony of this, in missionary work you can do everything possible, pray, act, work everything.. and yet the true investigators who will be baptized are always handed to you by the Lord.. Not one person in this great work was ever baptized because the missionaries found them.. They were baptized because they were ready and the Lord prepared a way for them to meet the missionaries or other members of the church!

Other things that were interesting was that the Blue Angles were here on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday making all kind of noise in the sky. It was pretty much awesome! They flew over everywhere doing cool stunts and tricks.. we worked in down town Charleston on Friday and it was almost interrupting the missionary work cause they were SO loud; flying only hundreds of feet above parts of the city.. maybe 2-3 miles off the ground! It was awesome! And another interesting thing.. We were invited about 5 times into this home where a lady and her son were.. we told her we cant because she is a single woman.. she was a little bit drunk.. So we refused to go in.. she insisted on feeding us and we really felt bad for her 8 year old son who was probably much more mature than his age.. we went to their patio where we could stay outside and in public and tried to teach them both as we were given an entire case of chicken.. we ate some and politely listened and taught some gospel principles. The family needed help but she would not let us enlist members of the ward to help her move as she was being evicted the very next day and had no where to go.. That was sad and strange.. But anyway!

I love and miss you guys and hope you are all doing well....!



You Inspire Me!


Mom, thank you for your awesome letter and pictures! You guys look great! I love and miss ya! I am so excited that Rich comes to church! Ahh! That is just so cool!! Yeah back in January I guess it was. I was a little stressed and had some anxiety going on so that's what the bill is about I met with a doctor there and talked with him about how I was feeling! Dads glasses look cool! It's funny being a missionary now I really think a lot about priesthood holders appearance and I love how dad ALWAYS wore suites in my memory growing up, and I remember his olive green suit he always wore.. that was a good looking suit! I think you can tell a priesthood holders commitment by what they wear to church. I remember the red shirt you got me when I was 18.. and how dad didn't want me to wear it on Sundays.. Man! Was that wisdom in him or what.. He's gunna be a bishop one day! I am grateful for a father who understands the priesthood! And of course a mother who understands it just as well! I have the best parents ever! LOVEYA!