Week 24

  July 19, 2021

WEEK 24 Mary Got Baptized 

Good Morning everyone!

Wow. I had an insane week. I am just going to share three cool miracles that happened this week, and tell you about some fun things that happened as well. But before I start, I hope all of you are doing well! Tell me about how you're doing! And, if you are on my email list and are sick and tired of getting my emails every week, tell me so I can take you off!

We had our first Multi-Zone conference in over a year! We had three zones together and it was so awesome. I saw a bunch of missionaries I had served around, and even finally met my MTC Teacher's cousin who is on the mission! Shout out to Brother Cobabe.

Okay here comes the cool finding miracles from this week. Elder Kofford and I have been setting aside a ton of the people in our teaching pool because they are not progressing. We have been really feeling like we need some new people to teach. So, as we went forth with great efforts to find, we had some really cool miracles happen. I had two really cool miracles happen this week from our finding efforts. 

As many of you probably know, we do a lot of Facebook Finding which is where we try to find people to teach over Facebook. This week, we received training on how we can improve our Facebook Finding efforts. What we do is we send people short videos of ourselves and introduce ourselves. We tell them what we do, and ask if they want to learn more from us. I took this training to heart and started sending these videos out like crazy! I sent a video to this one woman and she responded with such a cool story! She had left the church about 3 years ago, but was so grateful that I reached out. She said me reaching out was a sign from the Lord and she wants to start coming back to church and learning from us. It was so cool!

Another really cool miracle this week was finding our new friends Jessica and Billy. Elder Kofford and I went out to go knock on the doors of some less active members of our ward. I really felt like we needed to say a prayer before every door we knocked. So, we would drive to their home, say a prayer, and knock on their door. We pulled into the driveway of this house. I asked Elder Kofford to say the prayer. Then, when the prayer was over we opened our eyes and there was a woman just staring at us in the car. We both jumped because it freaked us out! But, we rolled down the window and started talking to her. She seemed interested and got her boyfriend to come out. Long story short, the inactive member wasn't interested, but we are now teaching Jessica and her boyfriend Billy. They came to church Sunday and are progressing so well! Billy is already talking about wanting to get baptized! 

The last miracle would definitely be Mary's baptism. Mary is TERRIFIED of water. Like absolutely horrified. So, with this being the first time I am actually baptizing someone, I was already scared as it is. Combine that with baptizing someone who is scared of water, I was pretty stressed. But, the Lord was with us. As she started to step into the font, she wanted to leave. We were all scared she was going to quit there. But, we got her down the steps. Then, she mustered the courage and I baptized her, anddddd she didn't go all the way under. We did it 2 more times and each time she would swallow water and come back up. By this time, all the ward members were coming up to the glass and giving her words of encouragement. She was a great sport as well. She said some funny things that I want to quote. The Bishop asked if it would be better if we closed the doors so no one could see her getting baptized. She said "no it is fine they can all just watch me drown" (Just so you know, she was kidding and everyone started laughing it was really funny). Another funny thing was, one of the Bishopric members came behind us at the font and was like "If she gets close, just shove her under". She didn't like that haha and she said "I don't like what he just said. I am glad he's not the one doing it" hahahaa we were all laughing really hard. We baptized her one more time, and 4th time was the charm! 

But, overall it was a really great experience. A ton of the ward members showed up to the baptism and she had so many really nice ladies befriend her and I am so happy for her. They helped her change, and she felt so welcomed. She is doing so well and we are so proud of her.

Funny Moment from this week:

One funny thing that happened was they took our truck back. We were kind of mad but it is okay. We got one of the Sister's Equinox's and the Sisters are wayyy more clean than the Elders. Ours smells brand new. It is actually pretty sweet haha.

There are lots of funny things that happen everyday, but one of the funniest of the week was last night. All the Elders in our apartment were talking about scary things that have happened to us before and scary movies we've watched and stuff like that. I am not sure how that came up, but as I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed, they turned off the breaker and all the lights shut off. Then they all proceeded to try and scare me and it was so funny haha. They know I can get scared easily sometimes, and they went to great lengths to scare me and we were all laughing so hard. It is always a fun time.

But, that is all I have for the week. I love you all, have a great week!

-Elder Elliott