This showed up this week...YES!

Continued work in South Bend

Hey Y'all!

What a week! We are seeing a steady increase of the work in the South Bend ward. There are miracles happening everyday and the people we are working with are being changed by the Spirit. We also have been able to bond more and more with the ward, they are considered family already. The central lesson Elder Porter and I have learned these past two transfers is that we must be obedient and do all we can, then just sit back and watch God do His work. We can't make miracles happen, we can only help set the stage for them.

Speaking of miracles, the transfer scripture President Cleveland sent out this transfer was an answer to our prayers. We have had this goal of three baptisms since the beginning of last transfer and worked our tails off to reach it. At the end of last transfer I kept having the feeling that "we aren't going to see 3 baptisms this transfer but the next transfer" and so I just went with the flow and we kept working hard. Well we continue to pray for 3 baptisms and keep working to reach that goal and when we read Enos 1: 12 which says:

"And it came to pass that after I had prayed and labored with all diligence, the Lord said unto me: I will grant unto thee according to thy desires, because of thy faith."

As we finished reciting the scripture, Elder Porter and I both looked at each other and were feeling the same thing! We both knew that the Lord was telling us that our prayers would be answered in His own time and that we just had to keep being faithful and follow His will each and every day. Then for companion study Elder Porter randomly decided to read Alma 37 and there were multiple verses telling us the same thing! Super cool experience.

Our investigators are on the upward slope. Maria ALMOST came to church yesterday. We brought the bishop's wife to our lesson and she was PERFECT for Maria. They talked for a while after we left and Bishop's wife told Maria that she would pick her up for church and would come help her get ready if she would like (cause Maria is old :). Well Maria ended up having to take her daughter to the hospital that night and ended up staying there to help her so we didn't get to see her at church :( but we know that she will come soon. 

We are starting to teach a young family, Maurice and Racine. They are reading the Book of Mormon together and at the end of our lesson Racine gave the closing prayer and said "Lord, we feel already that this is the path that you want us to take." and also said "We are grateful that you had us talk to Elder Porter as he walked up to our house even though we didn't want to at first." SO COOL! They have three little ones and will be a huge blessing to the ward when they are baptized.

Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, live. They are performing a great work here on earth. They are training their children to live the eternal life that is prepared for us. Opposition may ensue, but the war has already been won between good and evil. It is a honor to serve in the Lord's army.

Sincerely,

Elder Young

T minus 6 weeks...

Good Day!

I go home in 6 weeks! :'( I knew this day would come, but not this fast!

Elder Porter and I are excited for these next six weeks. We have had a really good feeling about the work here. There are avenues that are opening up where avenues close. There has been people prepared in this area by members to receive the gospel. We are in the process of teaching two member referrals that have been strongly fellow-shipped. 

One of the member referrals has been coming with the family for several consecutive weeks now. We have set a goal for baptisms next transfer and feel that three people will be able to enter the waters of baptism in the next six weeks. We are going to do all we can to reach the goal and leave the rest in God's hands. It has been a blessing to learn from experience that this is 100% God's work and we can try to do all we can, but in the end God is the one who does it all. He leads us to people, He teaches people by the Spirit through us, He gives people the witness of the truth, and He is the one who changes their hearts. We simply just have to give it our all and have faith in Him.

This week we had specialized training down in Indianapolis. That is where all the trainers and new missionaries go to be trained by President Cleveland and the Assistants for the day. We were able to spend the night with my homies in Crossroads. It was soooo good to see them and what was even more cool was they moved apartments and now they live in a million dollar guest home off of a member's home! It is pretty much like a giant party house. They have a basketball court, pool table, movie theater set up, underground tunnel to the main house, and TONS of open space to play. The only problem was the AC was broken so some of us slept in the underground tunnel (I attempted to sleep down there on just concrete... didn't work) and the rest of us slept in the theater section of the house with fans.

We had a good time at specialized training, but it seemed a little bit moot for us to be there because I had already taught Elder Porter everything they did so he pretty much just got to learn it over again and ace all the role plays because we had already practiced it all so much :) It was a great time to see many missionary friends and reconnect with them.

Last night I dubbed Elder Porter the new senior companion for this new transfer (I think it is getting to his head, so don't congratulate him :D) with a huge samurai sword at the William's house. I will send you all a picture of the event.  He is doing so wonderful and I thought it would benefit him to take on more responsibility. He will do great and I know he will help push me hard these last six weeks.

Well I love you all so much and am grateful for all your love and support you have shown to me these past 2 years. 

God bless you all!

Sincerely,

Elder Young

Aloha!

Aloha!

This week has been another wonderful week. We have had some set backs with all our investigators, but we are continuing to see new doors open up and old ones close. Our investigators are all going through different struggles and so we just have to be patient and keep showing them love. Elder Porter and I also got to ride our bikes a lot this week due to the end of the month and running low on alotted miles to drive. We had a blast and it was hilarious to hear Elder Porter go from nagging me daily to ride bikes to now not wanting to even touch his bike :) I told him how lucky we were that we got a full time car, but he didn't listen... greenies :D 

Elder Porter and I are having a great time together. We tease the crap out of each other everyday and have a blast teaching people. He is doing so well that when we go to knock doors he will go about 15 feet away from me or cross the street and we will both contact and teach people on the door step by ourselves. I am so proud of him! I could have never done that as a new missionary, I was terrified to do that up until about 13 months of being out.

We are working more with a return missionary in our ward, Sa Kennach. She does A TON of missionary work and loves to help the missionaries. Infact, this week we went down to the temple open house with her, her inactive older brother, and her brother's girlfriend who isn't a member. The girlfriend (Sina) is interested in the church and we are going to start teaching her in the Kennach home thanks to Sa being a great missionary! It is also helping get her older brother, Taft, reactivated.

The temple open house has been a great experience for everyone. We have been able to go down three times so far and take 5 nonmembers with us. It is a little frustrating dealing with all the anti-mormon stuff that is going on at the temple, but the work moves on! Apparently the anti-mormon crusade has been pretty heavy at this temple open house. 

There is an ex-bishop who is leading the campaign and has hired several people to dress up as parking ushers and hand out anti-mormon literature disguised as church information. Some people have also come through the tour and when they went through the celestial room, they emptied pockets full of dirt on the white carpets. Someone else also brought in animal poop and put in in the celestial room as well. I quickly realized why they didn't have any elders help out at the open house, because if they did then there would be one too many brawls happening with anti's :)

Things are going great, and Elder Porter and I are still working hard and praying to find three precious souls to baptize in the next 7 weeks.

If you guys could pray for Kadesha and Lizzie this week, that would be much appreciated. They are going through some struggles right now and could use the spiritual support.

Love you all!

Sincerely,

Elder Young

Temple tour with the Kennachs!

                           And dinner at the Williams house! They had a samuri sword almost as tall as I was!

South Bend report

"Howdy Howdy Howdy!" -Mr. Shark (with Woody's cowboy hat), Toy Story 1

Miracles continue to abound in different ways. All our investigators who were progressing seem to have hit a spiritual roadblock simultaneously. We are sadly going to have to stop teaching our dear friend Lizzie. Her abusive husband has put the kibosh on us teaching her and so we cannot tread any further. Please keep her in your prayers. 

Also Kadesha's friend, Autumn, must have received some anti-Mormon literature because during our church tour she kept making weird faces and had to leave early. We were really bummed out that it ended the way it did for the lesson, but we have not lost hope!

We focused our efforts on finding this week and continue to find wonderful new people who have so much potential to progress. We are eager to meet with them all this week. We also have had some wonderful opportunities to strengthen relationships with lots of the members. We do service for a couple who have recently returned to activity. We help him fix several van's that he uses for his taxi service. He has been teaching us some mechanics, including how to change breaks, change spark plugs, change radiators, and this week it will be changing the engine heads. 

This couple has really dived head first back into the church and are working towards going to the temple to get their endowments out. Our gospel principles class has been temporarily cancelled due to a large attendance of recent converts and returning less actives in the temple prep class. It is a joy to sit in there with them and make comments about the greatness of the temple.

Elder Porter and I continue to work out every morning at the YMCA. We have been working out really hard and I soon shall have the pecks of David Hasselhoff :D

Well I love you all and thank you for your love and support.

Sincerely,

Elder Young

A text I got today...it made this mother VERY happy!

"Elder Young wanted to send you this picture...I have waited a year to see him again. He doesn't have too much longer and he will be home." When I responded that Elder Young must have been very happy to see him, he responded, "He was ecstatic." I love this boy of mine.

More from South Bend: and in the closing prayer her friend, Autumn, told Heavenly Father that this was the best day she has had in a long time.

Dear Loved Ones,

Something big and spiritual is about to go down in South Bend! There are so many miracles happening here in our area. We have set our goal for 3 baptisms this transfer and we have been giving it our best effort to reach that. We still have no one on a date and have 3 weeks left of the transfer, but Elder Porter and myself have a feeling that we are going to reach our goal in the Lord's own way. We are finding tons of awesome new people and are starting to meet with multiple investigators regularly. Things are looking up, we just need to ward more involved (we are working on that). We also were able to go with 4 people to the temple open house so far and had great experiences with each of them.

We definitely had some miracles this week. First one. We are teaching an old head quarters referral named Lizzie. I looked at all the referrals that this area received in the past year and Lizzie was a referral from about a month and a half ago. We contacted her and she wanted to meet. We went over with Sister Garner and boy was that inspired! They hit it off and turns out Lizzie used to be an ordained minister but has had several trials over the past few years that has caused her to backslide a little. She is very smart and when we taught her the Restoration she was more excited about it than we were! That was probably the funnest lesson I have had in a long time because we were able to feed off each other and both rejoice over the message of the restoration. When we told her about the temple I asked her if she remembered the temple Solomon built in the Bible and she said "This is the same thing as the temples back then, isn't it!" And we of coarse had a blast telling her about the temple open house happening down in Indy. She is going through an abusive marriage right now so we have to tread lightly because there is going to be a divorce soon. We are just praying the Lord can help her get around this road block so she can focus on baptism.

Another amazing miracle we had was with our girl Kadesha! She grew up going to church but she got discouraged because they always talked about feeling the Spirit and she never felt like she could feel it so she thought something was wrong with her. Her old church also taught "hell fire and brimstone" and "spoke in tongues" (which freaked her out) so she just decided to leave it all. We taught her about the Plan of Salvation and she totally gave some great responses to the questions we asked her and the scriptures we read with her. We left her a pamphlet and committed her to read it. Well when we texted her a few days later she said she gave the pamphlet to a friend who was going through a hard time and talked to her about the Plan of Salvation (already doing missionary work, what a boss!). Well when we met with heron Sunday morning HER FRIEND WAS THERE! Her friend read the Plan of Salvation and loved it. She wanted to learn more and so we taught them both how to recognize the Spirit using the scriptures and they both felt the Spirit. Kadesha said she felt a light feeling like she was on a plane that was descending. We committed them both to baptism and in the closing prayer her friend, Autumn, told Heavenly Father that this was the best day she has had in a long time.

I definitely know this is the Lord's work and we can't control the results of the work. All we can do is improve ourselves and give our full effort then watch the power of God bring the results. "We are saved by GRACE, after all WE CAN DO." This applies to the work of the Lord.

Thank you for all your love and support!

Sincerely,

Elder Young