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