Sunday, August 25, 2013

August 26, 2013

YAY for baby Adelaide and her family!  Thanks for the picture.  I like pictures.

Thanks for the recipes and substitutes.  I am baking more than I ever have in my life because there is no cheap alternative.  Our baking pan is terrible though and everything burns to the pan but is raw on top.  We don't have enough time to bake at a sufficiently low temperature.  I haven't really had time to look for camera stuff but I have been told it is hard to find anything that isn't a Samsung.  How much would it cost to send it to me?  It might not be worth it.

I wasn't really sure why I shared that part about planning in my last email.  It wasn't something I had planned on or thought about before hand.  Then, the next day, my companion and I were talking about what we could do to help the members do missionary work and I remembered what I wrote.  I know that before my mission I always wanted to share the Gospel but didn't know how to do that effectively.   I tried to set an example for my friends and I would talk about the church when it came up but I didn't have a plan.  In the District 1, the Sister Missionaries were talking to a member and planning out how she was going to share the Gospel with her friend.  They picked a specific person and came up with a very specific plan for how she would share the Gospel with her.  I remembered all these things and suggested to my companion that we meet with specific members and hold a missionary style planning session with them.  We would set goals and come up with a plan to accomplish these goals.  As a companionship we're still not sure how exactly we're going to do that though.  What do you think as members?  Would that help much?  

Thank you so much for all your prayers.  I have been amazed at the small subtle miracles that I see everyday.  We live at the top of a massive hill (it's actually a well developed mountain) and we have to hike to the top multiple times a day.  It is really steep and often we are in a hurry.  It is exhausting but I have never gotten sick from it.  The gift of tongues is also clearly present in my life.  There are time in the lesson when I don't understand any of the words but I somehow know what is being said.  When comparing notes with my companion afterwards there are some things that even he missed that I was able to get the gist of.  One of the less actives who come to English class every week showed up to church the past two weeks with her daughter.  The members all gathered around after sacrament meeting to welcome and talk with them.  It was amazing.  I feel that your faith is part of making these miracles happen.  (This paragraph was his response my my earlier email about how much we pray for him.  I told him about specific things I had prayed that day.  They are some of the things he mentioned in his reply.)

About being busy; we're struggling there.  Our teaching pool is really small and most of them are so busy that they can't meet us often.  I haven't even met our one real progressing investigator yet (although we have a promise that we can next week!).  Our not yet progressing investigators and potentials haven't lived up to expectations so we have a lot of free time.  We are almost through our less actives list and just last night we called all the former investigators that we felt had potential.  I don't know what we are going to do next week.  Proselyting is just sad and disappointing and I'm not looking forward to a week of just that.  Oh well, the Lord will provide.
Thanks for the support, share the Gospel with everyone,
Elder Stapley

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