Week 75 - Okay and Okay

Well I sure do hope you all had a great Easter weekend and were able to really enjoy the whole time. I know I did! It sure is good to hear from all of you though, glad to hear that you are all doing well! At least from what I hear everyone is doing well. Things up here in Edmonton are just moving right along, which is good! I will start from where I was this last weekend with everything at church with Elder Soares of the 70 coming up to our Stake. He has been touring around with Elder Christofferson and visiting different stakes and everything to give leadership training, which is generally done about every 3 years. So that will explain why he was here and addressing us. from what I hear he was over in Sister Davis' mission over there in “Winterpeg”, sounds like fun! It was just really powerful to hear the testimony of someone who has had the gospel truly effect and change their lives, and have responded to the face of adversity with such great faith. He shared some personally experiences and everything that were really eye opening, I just hope that I can develop my faith to be able to respond in that same way when things go wrong. Well okay, hopefully things just won't go wrong. 

Teaching this week we had a few really great experiences, the Lord is blessing us greatly right now with some choice opportunities. We were able to teach Quinn and Tanis two times this week. We are focusing on the Plan of Salvation due to life and what she has gone through. Really just trying to help someone reconnect with God and realize that He loves them infinitely you would think is easy, but it is a rather difficult thing to do as this all comes from experiences they need to have. And from what we read from the Book of Mormon in Alma 32 it comes with first having that desire and that desire will lead to faith, or at least faith promoting experiences. That is what we are working on now; having that desire turn into more than simply a desire.

Another experience we had though was just incredible. We went to go get a hold of this brother that previously Elder Spencer and his companion couldn't really get a hold of. We knocked his door, he was home and he invited us in... okay actually his roommate invited us in and his name is Ken. They are both from Uganda, and they are just the coolest guys! We sat down and Ken was talking about how he was hoping we would come back and talk to him sometime because his mom and sister had gone to church before with John (the less-active guy). He has incredible faith, a great desire, and this just led one thing after the next and we taught him the first part of the restoration. He ended by saying how we made his day! We then saw Ken last night and we finished the restoration, really gave him a good intro to the Book of Mormon, and then he accepted the invitation to be baptized on May 31. What a guy! So excited for him and the changes that he is making, but also I am excited to see the blessings flow into his life. 

Other than that we have been visiting a lot with different less-actives here in the ward. There are some that we have really been able to establish great relationships with; the type where they will call us and invite us over because they are having just a bad day and need to have a good message. But that is all on top of the regular visits we have with them. Now we just need to take that and get them back to church and then onto the temple! More and more the less-actives we are working with are from the Philippines also, I love it! They are all such good people. One we are working with made it to church for the first time in a long time this week and has plans to make it a regular thing, life is good! 

Okay well, I love you all! The sun is starting to shine up here! Things are warming up! I will talk to you all very soon! 

Love, Elder McFall