Strengthen Your Testimony

Dear Family & Friends:

Here is a look at my past week:

12/19 Monday
Today was a great P-Day! This morning we had the Word of Wisdom lesson with Sister Fuapapa. Not very often, when you teach the Word of Wisdom, the person tells you that they have a testimony of it and that they have already stopped drinking coffee. She said that she had talked with her side of the family that are members and they taught her about the Word of Wisdom! She is super excited for her baptism on Saturday! Today for P-Day, young men showed up to play ball with us.  There were so many people! We just split in teams of four and rotated in the games! It was a lot of fun.

Sporting his Christmas sweater.

 12/20 Tuesday
The most exciting part of today was opening Christmas presents! I don't have the will power to see a present wrapped and not know what it is, so I opened all my presents... Mom is going to be mad! haha Oh well, I got some super cool things! I have an amazing family!

12/21 Wednesday
Dinner was a hoot tonight.  We had a lesson with a part member family that is from Louisiana! It was some of the best food I have had out here! We were laughing the entire dinner. So that was lots of fun. We also helped clean out a garage today and organize it. I love doing service.

12/22 Thursday

Lots of Candy! (About 30 pounds of candy)

Today was a busy day. We had Zone Conference and that was a great meeting.  We talked about how precious our time here as missionaries really is and how every minute counts. We found out today that one of the Apostles will be coming to the mission towards the end of January! That will be an amazing experience to be able to receive counsel from an Apostle of the Lord, Jesus Christ! We get the most amazing things as missionaries! Today Sister Fuapapa had her baptismal interview and she is completely ready for baptism! Our Zone Leaders forgot that they had to do the interview, so they were super late and then they didn't have a baptismal record, so we had to go get one while they were doing the interview and it made us way late to dinner. But after all of that, we were able to have a lesson with some recent converts and that was super spiritual. We talked a lot how as missionaries we can tell people nonstop about the Gospel but that doesn't do any good if they don't ask and pray for themselves to know if God has restored his Church.

12/23 Friday
What a testimony builder this week has been. Tonight we had a lesson with a man who has been investigating for a long time. We went over all of the baptismal questions just to see where his testimony is at. He said that he isn't sure that Joseph Smith was a prophet and that we have a prophet here on the earth today.  He also isn't completely positive about following all of the commandments. It is interesting to see the difference between him and Sister Fuapapa. She has a strong testimony of the Book of Mormon and Prophets, therefore, the commandments are easy to follow. But when you don't have that solid testimony, all we are asked to do seems like too much. The Book of Mormon is the keystone!!! Joseph Smith is a prophet! We have a prophet that leads us and is giving his all for us every single day! If any of us are struggling in the Gospel, please, look at your testimony of those three things, and start strengthening that testimony now!

12/24 Saturday
Baptism!!
Sister Fuapapa was baptized today. Earlier this week she asked if she could have a few minutes to bare her testimony of the Gospel! She stood and bore her testimony and it was amazing to hear an absolutely clean from sin person bare testimony of her love and gratitude for our Savior! Her son came who is not a member and he felt the spirit, so I hope that we will be able to start teaching him. For Christmas Eve, we got to go and spend the evening with different members. We took it easy because Elder McClure got sick today and wasn't feeling too great! Hopefully he is feeling better tomorrow!

12/25 Sunday
Christmas!!
Church was super great today and I got to talk to my family! It was so good to see them and to talk with them. Saying goodbye sucked so next time I call I will just talk and then when time is up, I will just hit end and then l won't have to go through the goodbye haha.  Tonight's dinner reminded me of Star Valley dinners! We had a huge steak and a little salad! Haha I love Christmas and the spirit that can be felt!

I hope all of us had the chance to think on the gifts that God has given us. I thought a lot about John 3:16 and how much God truly does loves and what amazing gifts we have been given. The Atonement of Jesus Christ is a gift. Christ bled and suffered because of me and I will be forever grateful for that. It is a miracle every time we kneel down and ask for forgiveness. Family and friends, I bare testimony that God loves you! Count your many blessings, name them one by one!

Love, Elder Call