Power in the Word

Date:	Mon, 12 Nov 2018 15:00:28 -0600
From:	Brett Hogg

Today we had the awesome opportunity to have Elder Lynn G. Robbins of the Seventy (Luke 11) visit the mission! He spoke a lot about what he's spoke on before with Elder Holland plus some bonus features. He also talked a lot about marriage. lol. We have two more meetings with him tomorrow and Wednesday, so we drove into Dallas last night and we'll be here until then.

This week we had a lesson set up with this awesome guy who we are teaching (and his wife, but his wife was out of town), they are the same ones that came to church on Sunday! We'll we were talking about what we should talk about with them, and we pray about what we should teach that day before we plan and stuff, but nothing really felt right. We decided we'd go in and just see if he had any question or anything, just go with the flow, but maybe talk about temples. 

When we get there we see the Book of Mormon open on the table on his porch next to his ashtrays and vape machine. He invites us in and says, I don't know what you were thinking of talking about, but I was thinking we'd talk about Alma. Sounds good to us! We had sent him Alma 32:21-43 as kind of a daily scripture text we send. We sit down and he reads off Alma 32:21-29. He tells us that the parable of faith, and praying to know if something is real, is something he's used to teach "nonbelievers" a lot before, but it frankly never occurred to him that he would be on the other side of it! He felt like it was God speaking to him, telling him that he doesn't need to know if EVERYTHING is true to move forward with what he does know is true, and be baptized! 

He said it has been a while since he's felt God speak to him through the Word, and that it was pretty exciting for him to experience it again. We were speechless! It was awesome. He still wants to learn more but is looking forward to being baptized in December! How awesome is that! This is so big for him, and means so much! For me it just grows my testimony of the Book of Mormon and truthfulness of the Holy Ghost, and the Restoration. It was an awesome experience and I felt the spirit just being there!

On top of some cool marshallese people we are teaching we are also now teaching am awesome Guamese lady! She's married to a lost sheep (someone who is a member of the church but inactive and doesn't have records here in the area). We stumbled across him while we were stopping by another marshallese family (a lot of them live in the same area(s)), we offered him a pass-along card and he was like I used to go make visits with the Elders back in Hawaii. Sweet! So we go by them and it turns out his wife had taken the lessons back in Guam but never got baptized, but her brother did. So, now we're teaching her again! They said they want their family to be close to God again, and they want to go find a church! We left them a Book of Mormon the first time we met them, with the introduction to read. When we went back she had already read up to Chapter 12! Neat family, I'm excited for them.

We're also able to start teaching an agnostic man who tends to lean towards what seems to be a nors pagan religion. Well the other day he said that he's starting to feel like we were put in his life for a reason and that maybe this is the path for him. So that's pretty neat!

Anyway, that's about it from the front lines. The mission sure is the best, feelin the spirit, knowing God. Anyway, love yall!

Elder Hogg