Well, this is the first summer that I've had that doesn't include some
sort of break. No rest from school or work here. Instead we get to work
even harder... in the heat!
Things are going well. Our area is
continuing to build up slowly. It's certainly an adventure here. Our
fireside on Saturday was very good. We heard from Elder Johnson of the
Seventy. Saturday was also an exciting day as there was a baptism in the
branch for a girl that recently turned 8. But that's a small part of the
story there. Here's more:
One miracle came for us on Friday after zone meeting.
During
zone meeting the zone leaders touched on all of the trainings (trainings
are different methods that we have to add to our ability to do
missionary work for example, using media, eating dinners with members
and investigators, etc.) and committed us to use each one.One of them is
taking people through tours of the church buildings. None of our
"investigators" seemed like anybody that could use that training so, we
were left to just flipping through our member directory. My eyes rested
on a part-member family. The mother, 3 sons and daughter actively come
to church. The daughter, Cindy, just recently turned 8 and was to be
baptized the next day (Saturday). The father is not a member and is
quite opposed to the Church, enough that we can't visit them in their
home and have never been in contact with him. But I felt that we needed
to invite them to go on a church tour that night. We knew it was
last-minute and may not work out, but we felt like it was something we
needed to do. After the zone meeting, we called then shot off a text to
the oldest brother with the invitation to come that night. After several
minutes, we got a very excited response. He said he didn't know what
happened, but that it was a miracle. Cindy had called her father at work
and he accepted not only to come to the tour but also to attend her
baptism, something he previously rejected. The church tour (not at our
usual church building, which doesn't have a baptismal font, but where she
would be baptized the next day) went well with the focus entirely on
Cindy. She said the kneeling, closing prayer in which the father also
knelt without any plea or persuasion from us or the family. He attended
the baptism and instead of children being right up next to the font, it
was him looking down on his daughter. We haven't begun teaching him and
maybe the miracle isn't yet complete, but this was a witness to me of the
power and inspiration that comes from the Holy Ghost.
Hope you guys keep doing well and have a great week!
Love,
Elder Phong Manhardt
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