December 15, 2010

December 15, 2010 - Week 5 of Transfer 7


Hello my family in Christ!

Christmas is coming so fast, the weeks fly by! I love serving in this University stake! People my age! People I can relate to! This past week was unreal as far as the work goes! At this moment we have twelve people working towards baptismal dates, in the last four weeks this area has gone crazy, we can hardly keep up to the work. In the University Stake we started teaching three new people and I love them ALL!

Before I share a few quick stories. We had the longest ZLC of my life! From like 11 to 4 last Saturday. Bro. Hill and Bro. Christenson came to that ZLC to train us, it was fairly interesting. They work with the Brethren and the MTC on the way missions are run. They touched on some good things, my favorite was "mission culture". For the good and the bad. Thing I love about this Church, is that there is doctrine for everything! Well lots learned but not to interesting for you guys. This morning we had a quick meeting (during our PDay!) at the mission office. New rule. You are not alot to delete text messages and your companion has to see everything you send. I think its smart. Enough of the boring things.

So along time ago E. Dick was on a exchange and they were at the College. They met a guy named Francis and set up a lesson with him. It ended up and we weren't able to make the lesson that was scheduled (ZLC that was mandatory) but we had no way to contact him! He is from Ghana Africa and only here for a year and has no cell phone... Well when we were at the institute I saw this guy from far away and just KNEW I had to talk to him. E. Dick was busy talking to someone and this guy was 20 feet way, I went for it! I tracked him down and started to chat. His name was Francis and from Ghana! Elder Dick told me all about him and I found him! It ended up that he actually showed up and we weren't there... how sad?! and terrible. So after a week or two of no contact we found him. Scheduled a lesson and all is good know. He is Methodist yet really interested, he has a mentor family who takes him to church every week and he is really afraid to offend them but he wants to come to church. Everything started to make sense to him when we described the Great Apostasy. It always drove him crazy how he was baptized twice, earlier in a different denomination. He has such a strong belief in Christ and knows exactly what he wants in life. I love him, we have had some unreal lessons with him.

Then on Sunday we attended one of the University ward's Ward council. They are willing to do anything to help us out. Well they told us about this girl who was baptized in Taiwan a few months ago and she is now attending there ward. They (the WML) were teaching her the new member lessons and she started to bring her boyfriend to those lessons and then to church. His name is Dung Le and not a member of the LDS church, never been religious. So we decided to cancel some of the plans we had that day and attend their ward to see if we could meet him. It worked out, we met him. Then went to the Gospel essentials class with them. There was only a few of us in there and the lesson turned out to become tailored to them. Near the end of the lesson we started to talk about baptism and it started to get real spiritual, just five of us gathered in a circle of desks. I then asked Gung (pronounced young mixed with yom) what he thought about baptism. He sat there for awhile in silence then asked, "WHEN CAN I DO IT?" Right then in the lesson I told him we are holding a baptismal service on January 8th and invited him to prepare to be baptized on that date. It was crazy, never invited someone to be baptized with a specific date in a Sunday school lesson! This guy is hilarious to, a big time break dancer with crazy wild hair. It should be fun getting to know him.

We also started to teach Ryan Cook this week, he is my favorite right now! You shouldn't have favorites but he is so REAL! He is a big time skater and just in this past year one of his friends died. It made him really think about life and the purpose of it. Where we go after? What must we do? Well he started to attend a baptist church and got baptized not too long ago. Our first lesson with him was on Monday and just way to spiritual/sad for me! I never cry when I feel the spirit but in this lesson I came the CLOSEST I have in a long time to crying. Not because of the spirit but just emotion, I felt so bad for Ryan. He has gone through alot and right now to top it off his parents are going through a divorce. Well he was amazed when we told him about Joseph Smith, he couldn't handle it. The first vision blew him away! He always wondered why we don't have prophets today, or why God doesn't speak to man anymore. When asked to be baptized though he was devastated, in the thought of being baptized again. You should have seen the look on his face, it almost killed me, so sad. He told us how his baptism was the scariest thing he has ever done. I am having troubles trying to describe this moment in the lesson... Hmmm. Well I loved it. We were able to explain the restored priesthood authority some more and help him understand the importance of what we share.

Well this week I keep learning one thing. God loves ALL of his children. Christ died for all of us and many of us just don't know it. The infinite virtue of His great atoning sacrifice is extended to all. I am starting to see people and situations through different eyes. Why people do certain things, say certain things. I am starting to have a love for everyone I meet. The time I have with this sacred first name, ELDER is short. Real short, and I am going to make the best of while I can. No regret.

Love your son, Elder Pizzey.