Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Baptism Dates Set And An Egyptogogist?

Dear Family
This has been another one of those awesome weeks. We met with Jake a lot and he definitely getting closer to baptism. He was struggling with the Book of Abraham for a while because he felt like the Book of Mormon was true and the book of Abraham was false. They're translated by the same prophet so I guess it kind of makes sense why that would be a problem. He talked with his friend Danny and an Egyptologist which answered a lot of question, but he still has a couple struggles. We took him to a baptism of some other missionaries and he thought it was pretty awesome. Jake still feels good about his baptismal date of November 9th so keep praying for him and he'll make it.
 
Kevin, another one of our investigators, also has a baptismal date for November 9th, but he has already planned his baptism with who is going to baptize him and who the speakers will be, so he is pretty set. Things have definitely been looking really good for us and we've been having an amazing time here.

After asking Sister Helsley some questions this week she told us that she believes that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and that Joseph Smith is a prophet. That was a huge leap in the right direction, and we had a lesson on prayer with them and she prayed in front of us for the first time, so she is getting continually closer and closer to baptism. She doesn't want to set a baptism date and she still has a lot of pressure from family and friends to do other things, but we think she'll make the right decision in the end. One Wednesday we went over to talk to their neighbors and she came out with a huge smile on her face and said, "Perfect timing I made hot chocolate". It was the best hot chocolate I've ever tasted because she made it from scratch with love and some awesome ingredients!

We went on splits again and I got to visit Pastor Bob with a member again. It's always super awesome to talk to him and I learn cool things about the Bible. We started talking to him about the Book of Mormon which he has a lot problems believing there can be another book since he was raised with one book and he has taught about this one book for the last 43 years. At one point I felt like the spirit told me why he wasn't reading the Book of Mormon. It came that he doesn't think he'll find the Book of Mormon to be true, and he's scared that he'll have to tell us that and we won't come by any more. We basically told him that he was cheating himself by not finding out the truth of the Book of Mormon. He told us that if he felt it was wrong he would let us know, but if he felt that it was true he would embrace all of this 100%. If you look at church history there have been hundreds of pastors who compare the Book of Mormon to the Bible and end up joining. We are praying that he will be open to the answers he receives. He is one of the nicest people I have met out here and he deserves nothing less than the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

On Saturday Elder Nelson came back to visit the mission so he took us to breakfast. It was so awesome to see him and we talked about all the funny things that happened when we were companion. I miss him a lot and wish we could have served together longer. It was so awesome to see him. I also saw this Narnia pop up book at a members home on Saturday that was the craziest pop up book I have ever seen. I had to take a video of it. Ya basically Saturday was a good day.

There is always plenty of fun stories to talk about, but I'll leave you with these for the week. Sounds like everything back home is going well so that's good to hear. Have a good week.
Love Elder Hoddy, HFF!

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