Book of Mormon Experience

Hi! I'm glad you all had fun at Valerie's and Tyler's with the little Ty guy. It sounds like everyone had a good week. My week was pretty good. It was a slow week because it was the last week of transfers. We got our transfer calls on Saturday, and both Elder Vailea and I are staying in the Knik Fairview area. We might be moving apartments though. We live in the Settler's Bay area and the sister's live in our area, so we might move into the sister's apartment, and the sister's are getting a new apartment. They don't really enforce the "stay in your area" rule too harshly because we don't even live in our area, and the church is in a different area. Everything in Wasilla is really spread out so we put a lot of miles on our truck, especially because we live in a different area. Well, it was supposed to snow last week, and then it got warm (in the 50's) and just rained all the time, and most of the snow in the mountains is gone. It was supposed to snow today, but it's really sunny outside, so that's not going to happen.

Well, some good things and some not so good things happened this week. We finally had a lesson with Shawn. We were having a hard time getting a lesson set up with her, but she seems like she could be pretty solid so we are hoping for the best. We had to drop one of our investigator, Amanda. She was the one that was Jehovah's Witness. Her husband is really against religion, and when we went back for our second lesson, he told us that we shouldn't ever come back. It was a bummer, but it happens. I always wonder why the Lord doesn't soften the hearts of certain people so that more people can hear the gospel. I don't always understand it, but people have their agency, and the Lord knows more than I do so I just need to keep working. I can definitely tell that the Lord prepares certain people to hear and accept the gospel, but it's findng those people that is the hard part.

Something really cool happened on Tuesday. Elder Vailea and I were kinda bummed because our appointments had fallen through, and we decided to do some tracting. I parked the truck in a park parking lot in front of some aprtments so we could tract, and there was a black guy standing in the parking lot talking on the phone. He got off the phone and we went over and talked to him. He was from the Carribbean, and was a way cool guy. He said he had talked to missionaries before, and so we talked to him about the Book of Mormon. We had him read from the introduction in the Book of Mormon, and he started to cry when he was reading. We asked him what he understood from what he read, and he told us he didn't understand very much because it takes hima couple of times reading something to understand it. So we asked him how he felt when he was reading, and he said, "It's true." It was awesome to see that evern though he didn't understand what he was reading, he could feel the influence of the Spirit bearing witness to him that the Book of Mormon was true. We talked with him a little more, and gave him the Book of Mormon and our number, and got his number. It was a pretty awesome experience, except for the fact that he said he was moving to the lower 48 this week. Haha it seems like I do a lot of sowing but not much reaping. That's fine though. As long as I give them the opportunity to hear it, it doesn't matter who sees the results. I'll wrap up for this week. I love you guys! Love Mat