Elder Riley Layton

Friends,

All has been well this last week in Dallas. To start off, we bid a sad farewell to President Smith, I may see him a time or two before he goes home, but last Tuesday was his last training for us. What a wonderful, inspired man. I will miss him. I cannot even count the number of times I have gone to a meeting or a training, not knowing that I need to hear something specific, and he and Sister Smith always say exactly what I need to hear. He is truly an inspired man. Farewell President Smith.

On a brighter note, I am alive. Elder Betillyon and I had a near death experience this week. Well maybe not really, but it was definitely a testimony building experience. I was on an exchange with one of my zone leaders this week, and we were tracting this apartment complex, and we just sort of decided that nothing good was going on there, and we may as well knock the complex across the street. We go and knock across the street and after finishing the first floor of apartments two cop cars came screeching up to the complex we had just been at. Two cops run in (guns drawn) and this guy walks out, shortly by the cop knocking him to the ground, yelling profanities and kicking the poor guy on the ground. Since then, I have thought about Elder Bednar's talk about being prompted by the Spirit. We are promised to be guided by the Spirit as long as we are worthy and striving to do good. We had no idea at the time, but are so grateful now for the protection given us by our Heavenly Father.

One of our investigators Ray Rowell has made a lot of progress this week. He is a golden investigator, and we love going to visit him! He called us last week on our way to our training to ask us if he had to wait till July 9 to be baptized, which unfortunately he does. He has to come to church 3 times before he can be baptized, but he has made the commitment and wants to change his life. He is probably about 70 years old, and it is really cool to see him make such big changes in his life after so long. He may or may not have to have a surgery that would postpone his baptism, but we will find out today whether or not he will push his surgery back to August. He came to church yesterday, and heard about FHE on Mondays, and basically told us we can't be coming over on Mondays now because he will be having FHE. What an amazing man! We definitely love Ray!

Anyways, this week has been wonderful, hope y'all have been doing great as well!
Elder Layton