Splits with the District Leader

Hello everyone! This week I went on splits with the district leader and it was a pretty good time. Even though he is my missionary leader I was able to help him and teach him some things that would help him in his missionary work. I was able to learn some things from him too. One thing that was a miracle that happened during our time together was Elder Tenny (that's his name) said a prayer that these people would come to the church. These people are less active members that know the church is true, but it was just a miracle when they actually came to the church. We were able to share our testimonies with them. It was enough for them to say that they would come to church and start doing things to come back to activity. This was an amazing miracle and strengthened my testimony of prayer.  

Then we were able to meet with our investigator. His name is Minas and he knows the gospel is true and loves reading The Book of Mormon. His only problem is that he cannot quit smoking. We found out that he only smokes when his grand kids annoy him and then it just helps him to calm down. He said that he is only smoking one a day though and that he would stop smoking. We are just hoping that he is actually going to follow through so that he can reach his baptismal date of October 12. He has been reading the 12 step book which has been helping him. So I will keep you updated on that. We were also able to spend a lot of time with our branch president. We had a ton of branch things to do with him. The church leadership is improving. 

This was basically our week in a nutshell, but I just want to bear my testimony of prayer. It really is something that is real. God hears your prayers and will answer them. Just remember that he will not give us any answers if we are not going to follow through. So just pray with sincerity and God will answer.  

I love you and have a great week. Make good choices!

Elder Sproul 

Miracles

So this week we had a couple of miracles happen that I want to talk about. Two of the miracles that we saw happened were to two people that we were able to meet this week. 

First we were able to meet with a man called Aro. He works across the street from the church. We went into his work place and he expressed interest to stop smoking. So we just talked to him about how we could help him with that and we were able to testify to him that with the Lord he could be able to quit smoking and we were able to teach him about the restoration and The Book of Mormon. As the meeting closed we were able to give him a Book of Mormon and Elder Vincent testified of the peace that he has felt and the peace that he gets because he knows where he is going and then he was asking about what happens after this life. So we will be able to talk to him about in our next visit. 

Then the other miracle that we saw this week was when we were going to the church and this lady asked us if we were the Mormons. She said that she would come to church this week. In other words yesterday. She just came from Russia and she did not have a cell phone, but one of our members knows her and said that she is going to invite her and her son to church this week. I am super excited for her and her son. She and her son were about to come to church and were outside, but they got called to another city right before it started. They will get invited next week and I have faith in that. Oh and our investigator came to church this week. We asked Minas is he was going to come to church on Saturday and he said he wasn't going to make it, but he came. We were super excited on that. 

So that was basically our week. I love you and remember the Lord in all things. I read Revelations 20:12-13 and it talks about how we are going to get judged by books and I am sure that these are the scriptures. So read them and know how you are going to be judged. I love you and have a great week. 

Keep pushing

This week was a good week, but a little difficult. A lot of things just would not work out. We had a lot of plans that we wanted to happen for this week, but it just was not able to happen the way that we wanted it to. Almost all of our investigators ended up being busy this week and then all of the people that we wanted to pick up were also busy. All I can do it just do our best and the Lord will do the rest. There is no point in getting discouraged. This is a new week and a time to start over again. So I just need to keep trying to meet with them and have faith that they will be free this week. Sometimes the Lord wants us to learn something. I do not know what that is just yet, but I want to figure it out. My branch president always says that the Lord will not give us trials that we can not bear. That is true, but we have to realize that he will give us trials because through trials we will learn. It says in the teachings of Brigham Young: "The people of the Most High God must be tried. It is written that they will be tried in all things, even as Abraham was tried"Read D&C101:1-4. I think the this applies to us also. He then goes on to say have no fears, for if the word of the Lord is true, you shall yet be tried in all things. So do not get discouraged if you are going through tough times. The Lord gives trials to make us stronger. So that we can learn all we have to do is to find out what the Lord wants us to learn from this trial. I love you all and this week embrace your trials with gladness

I know that this church is true and we need to make sure we are doing everything that we can to make sure that we are on the lords side.  

Elder Sproul

Goal Setting

Hello everybody,

This week was a really good week. I don't know why that I have never done this before, but this last week we decided to pray about our goals and what we should set as out goals. With goals that were backed by the Lord we were ready and prepared to reach our goals this week. We started out the week a little bit slow, but we were able to pick up one investigator and set one baptismal date with one of our investigators. Then, as the week went on and it came to Sunday we were at 2 baptismal dates and 2 investigators. We did not know how were going to get the one more baptismal date and the 2 new investigators, but we were still confident that the Lord would pull through for us. In the end we were able to only pick up one more investigator on Sunday, his name is Suren and works at a bank and for an insurance company. He has a wife and a kid (oh and he does not smoke!) He is a great guy.  We are super stoked for him and are happy to see where his journey will go and we are hoping to be able to give him a baptismal date this week and meet his wife. On Sunday we were just able to get to know him a little and we talked about how The Book of Mormon changed our lives and how much it means to us. We explained how it came about and you could tell that he was feeling the Spirit. We asked him if he would read and try and find out if it was true. He accepted and it was definitely one of those meetings that I did not want to be anywhere else. 

Although our goals were 3 baptismal dates 2 people at church and 4 investigators and we were one short on each of them I think that the Lord had us set those goals for a reason. We were able to reach 2 baptismal dates on Friday and so I think that if we set it as 2 we would have gotten lazy and not tried as hard. Then on Sunday night we were able to reach 2 investigators at about 8:00 at night and we had an hour to go before we going to go home. We did not have any plans, but we wanted to try and reach our goal of 4 investigators so we just went to walk in one part of the city that was about 15 minutes away and then just make a big giant loop while talking to everyone on the way. On the way we were able to meet a really nice lady and she invited us over to come to her house on Tuesday so we are super excited about that. Although we were not able to reach the 4 investigators I still think that it was because the Lord wanted us to work hard for that last hour. If we would have hit the 4th investigator before that we would have said to ourselves,  "well that is it, we did it" and we probably would have tried to meet with some member that did not really need to be meet with, but instead we were able to find this lady and hopefully can help her to come closer to Christ. In other words, we just need to counsel with the Lord in our goals. In the past I would just talk with my companion and see what we thought was best, but we really should get on our knees and see what Heavenly Father thinks is best. After all, He is the one leading the work not us. This is why I have been super stoked lately and it really does help when you know that the Lord is backing us on your goals. Just helps you to get excited about them. 

I love you and God does really care about everything that we care about. We can ask Him for anything as it says in Alma 37:37. Have a great week and I will talk to you all next week. I know that this is His work, I am grateful to be a part of it and nothing would get done without Him. 

Elder Sproul