Continuous fun in Franklin...

This past week has been a whirlwind. To tell you of the irony we have experienced I wish to quote my lovely companion on the ride home from transfers:
"Hey, maybe this transfer we won't have such a rough start! (Talking about me having a TIA warning stroke, living in Greenwood for two weeks due to the sisters taking out apartment, and having to move everything around with apartments).

Haha we let me tell ya... on the way home about 20 minutes after he said that we got rear-ended on the free way (not our fault) and it was a hit and run... so we had to deal with all that fun stuff and then about two days later I got really sick and thought I was experiencing similar signs of another TIA so we went to the hospital at 2 in the morning and they informed me that I never had a TIA but that I was experiencing sleep paralysis the first time and the second time I had inner ear congestion from allergies which caused me to have some vertigo... So they put me on meds for that but I feel like my head is as light as a balloon and I feel nauseous all the time. THEN two days after the first car accident after transfers, while I was picking up my meds from Walgreens, I backed up the car and as I closed the door and Dodd started to pull forward an old lady backed into our car....also not our fault. 

THEN on preparation day while at a zone activity, I went to lunch with a good missionary friend of mine who is one of my district leaders and he told me of some disobedience that went down in the zone. So we called President and he ended up ending their preparation day early (ours too) to have us all change and meet him in the city for a meeting. So we lost most of our preparation day to hear President chew out some missionaries in our zone. hahaha it has been a CRAZY week :)

Right now we are working with our investigator Anna. She was also another miracle who has come along slowly but is making great strides and is shooting to be baptized on June 20th. We found her our first day in the area and she was the first door we knocked. Today she told us in our lesson that she had actually prayed that day that God would help her because she was having a hard time and was at her wits end. She has progressed slowly but very steadily and it has been so cool to see how receptive she is to the Spirit. The change that has taken place in her is amazing. She is working on quitting smoking and if you could all pray for Anna that would be awesome. She needs all the prayers she can get.

This work continues to move forward, we notice that the Lord leads us from day to day and we are right now "pruning the vineyard." We do lots of finding and stopping by potentials trying to get people to progress past the first lesson. We are excited to see some of these people progress here soon.

Thank you for all your love and support, if you could keep Anna in your prayers that would mean a lot!

Sincerely,

Elder Young

A picture and sweet text!

We got this text from a family in his area yesterday: 

(Elder Young) is such a good missionary! He does the right thing at the right time! He is very good!!! Elder young is very serious and diligent. He is recognized for his hard work here In Franklin. But today and during off times he is silly and fun! What a great boy you have raised!

Continual fun in Franklin

Hello Friends!

Last Saturday we got to witness the baptism of Crystal Smith. There was such a strong spirit felt there, so strong that the members that got up to speak were brought to tears just talking about it. It was so great to see that the Lord is preparing His elect all over the earth to come into the fold of Christ and aid Him in the final stages of His great work. Crystal has also been doing some family history and almost has some names all ready to go. President Hilton talked to her at the baptism about temple work and after that she was so excited to go and you could tell she felt a sense of urgency to help bring salvation to her deceased ancestors. We are in the works of setting up a temple trip with the ward mission. We will probably go in the next 4 weeks. Elder Dodd and I were so happy for her and it touched our hearts and made them soft and mushy ;)

Speaking of Elder Dodd and myself, we got transfer calls and we will both be staying. Elder Dodd will spend his last transfer in Franklin before he goes home. We have set some awesome goals that will stretch us this transfer, but we can already see that Heavenly Father is laying the groundwork for us to accomplish those goals as we focus on them and pray about them daily.

It was great to be able to talk to my wonderful family last Sunday night. I sure love those goof balls :) We talked about the mission and some of the great lessons we have learned, but the majority of the time was spent talking about all the girls my parents wanted to set me up with from my dad's campus ward he is the bishop over... haha. I was pretty nervous when my parents said they had girls for me to date, but I must admit that they have pretty good taste! :D

Well I love you all so much, thank you for your faith and prayers. Keep serving the Lord and giving it your all. I know Christ lives. He is my Redeemer and King.

Sincerely,

Elder Young

No email this week because...

We had such a great visit with Jake on Mother's Day! We didn't get to facetime until 9:00 pm his time, 7:00 pm our time but we got to visit for a couple of hours and it was great! We had some great laughs about the girls we want to line him up with, some serious talk about life post-mission, and some really great spiritual insight about the spirit of the Law and the Holy Ghost.

He is doing GREAT! He only has 4 months before he is released but he promises he isn't trunky. If anything, he's scared. :) He loves being an ambassador for the Lord.

This is a tiny recap of one aspect of our conversation: He's doing so great!! He did express to us that at the first of his mission he needed to live the letter of the law and as he grew and matured as a missionary and learned the true purpose of the law, he can now live the spirit of the law as guided by the spirit. And just recently this was confirmed to him by his mission President. So that was cool. :)

More fun in Franklin!

Hello Everyone!

This week we have seen great miracles and at the same time been tested and tried. I am in awe of the mercy and love of God. He knows His children so intimately and even more so He cares for them amidst all their shortcomings and struggles. If we can open our spiritual eyes and go out into the world, we will see that God is everywhere and is working with great "urgency" to save His children. 

There are so many experiences we have had this week concerning this concept but one I would like to share. We had another busy day of appointments and things that needed to be done and so we set aside some time to have some "power finding" which consisted of us setting hourly goals for our finding so we could get the most out of our finding with what little time we had. The previous, we set a goal to teach three lessons for one particular hour and get a new investigator. We set a goal for 3 total new investigators for that day. 

As we went out and started tracting, we only had about 25 minutes to accomplish our hourly goal before our next appointment. We prayed for divine help and then began knocking. Within 20 minutes, we were able to teach three lessons (including showing the "Because He Lives" video) and get three new investigators with return appointments for the next week. Elder Dodd and I were in shock and elated to just witness such a compact miracle. We thanked God for His great power and mercy.

Concerning some of the people we are working with, Crystal Smith is doing awesome. She didn't make it to church yesterday because he knee gave out when she got up and had to spend a good portion of the day in the hospital getting everything taken care of. She is doing much better and is still blazing down the trail to baptism. 

Our other investigator who was going to get baptized on the same day ended up flaking out yesterday. Armando is from Honduras where it is part of his culture to drink coffee. He has been a beast in overcoming drinking and other addictions but when it comes to quiting coffee he just isn't ready to quit yet. As we talked to him we could tell he is scared to commit with the fear that he will mess up in the future and drink coffee again. So he didn't come to church yesterday, and instead went to another church down the street from his house. He still wants to meet and we know that he will get baptized soon, it will just take time :)

There are amazing people we are meeting almost daily here in Franklin so we are excited to see these amazing individuals progress towards baptism here this week. On Sunday we definitely had a refining day. Everything that had been set up had fallen through, we had three people who were suppose to be at church but only one came, and we had received bad news after bad news. 

Also amidst all of that, both Elder Dodd and I are still recovering from our sickness and Elder Dodd got a huge burn on his leg from sliding on gravel into 2nd base in Kickball at MLC. So we had a great day :) It was cool to see though, that once everything had fallen through, we could have easily just went and taken a nap to help mend ourselves, but we felt this was the Lord testing us and so we went out and tracted and contacted some individuals and we had an amazing evening! We definitely felt that the Lord had people He wanted us to contact that night and because of it we have some wonderfully solid new people :)

Well I love you all and thank you for your love and support. Your examples and loving encouragement keeps me going.

Sincerely,

Elder Young