Two Letters in One

Monday October 22, 2017

So this week was a pretty good week. Minas was able to get the Holy Ghost this week and everything went well on that front. Then we were able to be with Manuk a lot this week he is our branch president. We are trying to meet with a lot of the members so that we can get them to feel that we care about them. We were able to meet with one member and we helped her to put her pej in. The thing that keeps her house warm. I don't know what it is in English. So after that we were able to talk to her for a little bit and invite her to come back to church. She has a grandson that we are going to try and meet with this week. So we will see how that goes.  

Then this week we were able to do some cement work with one of Manuk's best friends. Apparently Manuk has been trying to get him to come to church for some time now, but we just offered to help him and we were with him for a couple hours doing that and then we were able to testify about the Book of Mormon and invite him to church and he actually came. So we are super stocked on him and hope that he can progress in the coming weeks. We have a visit with him for Tuesday and are hoping that we can bring Manuk with us to that visit.

Then on Friday we had a branch council. It was going very well and we were giving a lot of assignments and then Gayane our Relief Society President had some problem with her heart. They said that her blood pressure all of a sudden dropped and that is why she wen't to the hospital. I think it was a fluke thing, but I don't know. She is just laying in bed and taking things easy right now. 

That is basically our week, but I want to finish up with knowing that you are never a lone. The savoir is always there. With training I have been feeling a little alone, but then on Sunday I decided to pray and I just felt the calming love of the Savoir. I love prayer and I am thankful to God everyday that I can talk to Him and council with Him. It really is a gift and we should cherish it. I love you all and have a great week. 

Elder Sproul

Monday October 30, 2017

This week was a pretty good week. I have noticed the advice that president Bostrom game me in an Interview with him has really Elder Millet and I work a lot better together. He really has a strong desire to help these people and I am super happy to be able to see what we can do in the weeks to come. 

Then this week the coolest thing that happened was when Anush the branch presidents wife invited one of her relatives to church. He is a 20 year old man and we are hoping to visit with him this week with Anush and get him progressing. Manuk's family is really hepling the church to grow a ton. 

Then we meet with this other 22yeah old ish man that knows English really well. He just wants to practice his English, but we have been able to testify about the Book of Mormon to him and let him know about our church. Although he is coming for English, he likes meeting with us and I know that he has felt the spirit when he has been with us. So little by little we want to help him. 

Then we were able to set a baptismal date with one of our members brothers. He has a lot of work to do to be able to reach his date of dec 9th, but I think that he can make it. He knows what he has to do to be able to reach it and now he just have to make that step of faith. 

So yeah that was our week. I love this work and am thankful for every day that I can serve the Lord. Try and do something nice for someone this week. It feels really good.  

New Missionary and a Baptism

So this week has been really good. We were able to get Minas Baptized and he is going to be a super good member. This week I am going to talk about President Manuk and make sure that he gets the Aaronic priesthood this week. I don't know what he calling should be yet, but during this week I want to pray and think about what calling would be good for him. 

Then this week I got to pick up Elder Millett. He is a very good Elder and can see him becoming a great elder one day. He already knows the language very well. He can speak it, but it is just a little hard for him to speak right now. He will get it over time. As they say kamats kamats or little by little. I am humbled for the opportunity to be able to teach a new member and thank the Lord every day for the opportunity. 

Then Elder Tenny had a super good district meeting about not wasting time and creating your onion which means to always have layers to your planing so that when one of your plans falls through you will have a back up. 

Another thing that happened this week was Manuk's new goal for the branch he wants 120 people by the end of the year. When he said this goal I was really shocked and did not know how we were going to make it, but then he said that we are going to get all of our less actives back to church. We are going to visit 3 families a week and get them to come back to church. Then he said that he already talked to one family and that one of them was going to come back and then the 2 others want to get baptized. So Just exciting things that are going on for missionary work and Manuk is super excited for it. 

Yeah that was basically our week. Do what the Lord expects of you. You know what you should do. ​

Transfers

Hello everyone!

This week I found out that I will be training a new missionary. Now I will have two "Sons" in the mission. It is going to be very different from my last time when it was out of my training.

This week we were able to help Minas a lot. We saw him almost every day. He has been progressing a lot. This Thursday at 1 he is scheduled to get baptized. He is super excited for his baptism and it is going to be a really good experience. 

During this week I have been loving the fact that I have been putting a bigger focus on my book of Mormon reading. There has not been a day in a really long time that I have not read from The Book of Mormon, but it is just different when you put a time on how much you are going to read instead of pages. Just something that my mission president said that we should put time into reading The Book of Mormon and not pages. So I want to invite all of you to do that so that you can let the spirit guide you.  So every morning I have been reading for 40 minutes and I really have just been enjoying it a lot more. Instead of just getting through my page amount I am just reading and not thinking about it. 

Then this week we have been working with a man called Vachik for a long time. Just about the whole transfer. He has not really progressed very much and he has been saying that he needs to get glasses so that he can read from the Book of Mormon. So I have not had a ton of faith in him because he never really did it, but then two visits ago he said that he got glasses and that he would read in his free time. I was still not being super faithful, but was happy that he said he would read. Then next time we came he was already in 1st Nephi 4. He told us that yeah Joseph Smith set up a church in 1830. So there is progress there and he has support from some members. When they heard that Minas was getting baptized his sisters told us that you will invite him to the baptism and they really want him to get baptized too. So he has some promise. The next step is just getting him to church. 

I love all of you and conference was amazing. I really like all of the talks, but my two favorite ones were Elder Nelsons and Elder Holland.

Elder Sproul

My week

So this week a few things happened that were really amazing and I just wanted to go into those a little bit more. 

1. We had a super cool English class this week. The American corner has put us in charge of an English class and it has been really fun to teach them some English. They put it on Facebook to announce that we would be teaching and the first week we had 1 person come to our class, but this week we had 18 people come to our class. Although it is just kids that we are teaching it feels good to help people learn English and actually help people. 

2. We have been working with one of our investigators for quite some time now. His name is Minas. We are thinking that he is going to make his baptismal date of October 12th.  He did have a relapse of smoking this week, but we were able to talk about it and he said that I know that I should not have done that and he is committed to be done smoking. So if he does not smoke he should be able to meet his baptism. In a meeting the other day, we had given him the assignment to read Enos and it was super cool that he asked us did they really give the record to their son and so on and so on? How long did this go on? We told him for a 1000 years and he was super amazed. Just questions like that, that shows that he cares. So we will let you know how everything goes, but that was my favorite part of the week that he committed to be done again and realized that is was wrong what he did. I have been trying to do the thing that it says in preach my gospel under addiction recovery in chapter 10. I don't remember exactly where it is, but it says to try and not crack your fingers or try to stop doing something that you do without thinking. So I have been trying to not crack my fingers at all and it is very hard. I will go about an hour or so and then without thinking I will just crack them. I have been going longer and longer, but I just can't imagine how hard it would be to quit smoking. 

3. Then our investigator that was a banker came back from Russia. He was there visiting his sister who just had a kid. We did not know if we were going to be able to visit with him again, but we have been calling him here and there to see if his phone was back on and this week he answered and said that we can meet today actually. So I am super excited about that and he is just a great guy. We want to take Manuk, our branch president with us to visit him because they are around the same age and both have young families.   

I love you and have an amazing week! Read The Book of Mormon and give thanks to the Lord everyday that we have the scriptures and we have the direction in our life. It really is a blessing to have them. 

Elder Sproul