April 16, 2012

Howdy y'all from Tyler Texas.

This week has been a blast!  We have seen some incredible blessings this week from our hard work.

Brother Clemons is an investigator who has been coming to church and investigating for the past 5 years.  He is a great man; he even has a home teaching assignment that he fulfills.  To be honest, nobody really knows why he hasn't been baptized yet.  On Wednesday he accepted a baptism date!  His date is for June 16th.  This is the first time he has accepted a baptism date!  He seems really excited to get baptized as well!  We are not really sure what happened and what caused the change of heart, but he is finally ready.  His wife is really excited too (She is the primary president).

Sister Strickland we started teaching about 10 weeks ago.  Brother Strickland is a member that hasn't been to church in quite a few years, but is ready to come back.  Both Brother and Sister Strickland are great, they are very humble and look forward to all the times we get to meet with them. What has been kind of frustrating though is that she has a testimony of the Book of Mormon, but wouldn't accept a baptism date.  She would tell us every time that she has been baptized, but doesn't feel the need to go through that again.  Brother Strickland gets really uncomfortable every time we bring up baptism and would have a talk with us after our lesson if we press the point with her too much, which made it really hard to try and overcome any concerns.  We have taught her nearly all the lessons by now, and last Thursday we sat down to decide what we were going to teach her and realized we didn't know what we should share with her.  Elder McOmber presented the idea that we pray.  The idea came to his mind during the prayer, but he wanted to make sure it wasn't just his idea, so he let me think about it after the prayer for a little bit.  I looked at her teaching record and had the same impression that he had.  We decided to teach about temples and family history.  We shared with her from the temple Ensign and watched the short version of between heaven and earth, and we told her that our end goal was not to get her to be baptized, but that our goal was to get her and Brother Strickland to the temple.  We explained that baptism was a step she needed to take to get her there though.  I showed her a picture of my family, and shared with her how important it was to me that I be with my family for eternity, and how much I love my family. Elder McOmber brought the spirit even stronger as he bore testimony about the temple and blessings thereof.  This bred an environment perfect for her to bring up her concern; she didn't think we believed her when she said that she had been baptized before.  We were able to teach her simply about the authority needed for that ordinance and she accepted a baptismal date!  The whole event was a miracle!  We are truly grateful for that humbling experience.

Saturday night a week ago Brother Randy Martin texted us and asked us when church started.  He came to church and brought his fiancée Shamonica.  We were able to teach her last Wednesday and Friday. When we went over on Wednesday they told us they were going to get married quickly, then have a ceremony later.  We were impressed at this, because it had to have been taught to them by the spirit that they should do that, we never told them to get married.  When we taught them on Friday we shared the plan of salvation.  That was awesome!  We used a lot of bible scriptures for Shamonica, and every time we taught her something that was new or foreign to her, and reinforced it with the bible, she would just stare at the page of the bible, and smile.  Then she would say something like "wow, its right here!  How come my church never taught that before" she is excited to learn and is humble enough to accept this message that is new to her.

The Lord certainly saw fit to bless us this last week and we are grateful for that.  We are again looking forward to a great week coming up!

Love, Elder Layton