Emotion Bomb

From my vantage point, there are a lot of emotions that I have to deal with now. It started off strong at the beginning of the week. Monday night was the departing testimony night and that shouldn't have been as hard as it was. To watch 4 consecrated servants of the Lord get up and bear their testimony was incredible. I'm so restful that I was here to witness that.

On the morning of he next day, we went and picked up the brand new missionaries. Their names are Elder Dawson and Elder Templeton. I wanted so strongly to express to them the experience that they were in for but I'm sure that they will figure it out one day :) Elder Menzel and I had the chance to take Elder Dawson out to knock on some doors and it was a beautiful experience. Elder Menzel and I tried almost every way that we knew in order to get this guy to listen to more of what we had to say and he denied it without fail. I turned to Elder Dawson who bore simple testimony of God. The man stayed there silently and looked at the ground. In the end, he still told us to leave, but he knew that he felt something strong. There is something strong about a young man that left his home for 2 years only to bear testimony of what he knows to be true. That doesn't change the agency of people, but it gives them a chance.

The rest of the week was filled with a little office stuff but we got out to work pretty quickly.

In my last sector, I was teaching a girl named Blessing. When I got called to Ecully, she just happened to be moving there! So, I got to keep teaching her! We went over to her a couple times and had some great experiences. At one of the meetings, we were planning on teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. My companions were speaking and teaching the doctrine and then I knew that it was my time to speak. However, I couldn't remember one thing that had been said to that point. I was taught what a stupor of thought is. At this point in the meeting, her baby started crying and all 3 of us just stayed quiet. She stood up to go make a bottle and Elder Wade turned to us and said, "audible?" We all decided that we were obviously not teaching what needed to be taught. The meeting turned into us teaching only about repentance and the spirit was there in abundance. Blessing is so great. It was a circus to try to get her to church. We stopped by a less active member that lives in her same building and taught him. We then asked if he could go pick up Blessing. He said he would! So we walked over to Blessing and she said that she wanted to introduce us to her friend that was coming to church with her. We walked a few doors down and Faith opened the door! That was cool because the Zone leaders just found her and started teaching her! We had no clue that they were friends!

Today, both of them came to church and loved it! I can see both of them getting baptized very soon!

Love,
Elder Marshall Underwood