January 9, 2012

Gainesville, Florida

Dear Family,

One of our investigators, Elena, has been reading every day and is really trying to see if this is what God wants from her, but I think she might be a little bit "off" because she had brain cancer a while ago and is epileptic and just acts a little strange sometimes.  The other day she told us that she was really stressed out because she couldn't find her medicine, so she went to bed worried about it and in the morning picked up the Book of Mormon and said a prayer to find it.  She said the second she did that, she looked and saw them sitting there.  I would think that would tell her something about the church!  She came to church yesterday and afterwards we showed her around the building.  She told us that she was a little bit offended that we didn't have even a cross in the chapel, so one of the members explained to her that we worship the living Jesus and not the one on the cross and that seemed to calm her down a little bit.  She says that her brother in-law is an "Elder" so we're wondering if that means he's a seventy...?  That would be crazy.  Basically, when it comes down to it, a bunch of different things have been leading up to us meeting with her and her becoming converted, but she is still not sure.  Pray hard for her!  We won't give up until the door is slammed and locked in our face haha.

Stephanie might get baptized this week, she's just 13 and doesn't have a lot of support from anyone except us, so pray extra hard for her to have a mighty change of heart.

This week I was focusing my studies a lot on the Doctrine of Christ and the missionary purpose and just want to tell you how wonderful Jesus is.  You should read that talk given by Bruce R. McConkie right before he died.  It is really powerful and opened my eyes about how important Christ's life truly is to us.  

We are working hard in Gainesville!  The winter semester just started, so all of the students are back and we get to write our e-mails in the Library.  It really is a beautiful place.  It just feels so secluded and cut off from the rest of the world.  It's been a little chilly, but now it's been back up to 70 and 80.  I don't really feel the January blues because all the months pretty much feel the same haha.  I hope that you are successful in finding people to help out.  It's interesting how true it is about always knowing what to do when you have stewardship over a group of people.  All you really have to worry about right now is Hannah haha.

I hope you have a wonderful week!  I love you so much.

Love,

Eric