February 25, 2009

We have had a great week. Yesterday, the President and his wife came over to inspect the flat and conduct the interviews for this transfer. Our flat passed with top marks, and we got a prize of nice brownie mix for it. This week we have found some new investigators and continue to schedule appointments for the future. Unfortunately, many of these fall through, but the more we schedule, the more will go through. Many of these people have real difficulties in their lives. Young, single mothers who need something, but there is so much against them. I wish they could see what blessings could come into their lives 5 years down the line if they were to make righteous decisions now. That is a real test to have that kind of perspective. We are just trying to show them a lot of love, without getting in their face too much.

I don't know if I told everyone, but we have a funny P-day schedule starting next transfer. P-days on Mondays, except for on transfer week, and then P-day and transfer day stay on a Wednesday. Dad a has list of the P-days for the next couple of months, so you can get that from him!

We don't have a whole lot to update on investigators. D****'s Baptism is being moved back to the 14 of March to help him prepare better. He lets his kids tell him what to do too much and they tell him they want to go home from church after sacrament, and so he goes with them.

Z*** and P*** we don't get to see often. P***l is still skeptical about things and Z*** isn't feeling well.

We challenged M****** and C******** to take steps towards baptism by setting a date. I think C******** doesn't grasp the importance of it all, and M****** is very poorly and feels like he has to be perfectly well before baptism.

We met a lady named A**. She is really great. She is a quaker, but her partner is Catholic. She wants to bring her kids to church.

Another girl named K**, who has two young sons. She used to hate religion, but a message about families softened her heart. She didn't understand much of what we said, but I hope that she felt the spirit in the room as we introduced the Book of Mormon and promised blessings.

The real great test is finding interested investigators and everyone know that tracting is not the best way to do that. We are focusing on trying a couple of different means, but it can be really hard to organize and think of other ways. We usually result in just walking around talking to everyone in the streets and knocking on their doors.

We have had some wonderful moments this week. I realized that we have wonderful moments every week, we just can forget them or not notice them sometimes. Yesterday, a member needed some help, and we had planned to go out and find some new people. We know how important it is to find new people, but we prayed and asked heavenly father what the right decision was, and we both felt that is was important to help this member. As we did so, we really felt the blessings of making the decision with the lord. Counsel with the Lord in all your doings. The more into the gospel I get, the more profound conference talks start to mean. I recoginize that they can actually be applied to our lives. Elder Bednar gave a talk last conference about Praying Always. He uses the counsel with the lord scripture in Alma 37:37. Prayer can be a simple part of our day, but if we consecrate our day unto the Lord and seek his will in our day, we will see miracles. We can always be asking: What do you want me to do? Where do you want me to go? What do you want me to say? etc. . . .

Family, I love all of you. I know this gospel is true. I know we are sons and daughters of a loving Heavenly Father. That knowledge alone changes lives. Sometimes I want to ask teenage girls around here if they know they are daughters of God. They try so hard to impress the world, and they are killing their own soul in the process.

Elder Davies