HAPPY VALENTINES!!!

15 February 2011

Well Happy Valentine’s Day,

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine’s Day. As missionaries we just try and forget about this holiday. It is okay though, we still were able to have a wonderful Valentine’s Day.

This week was very tiring but we still were able to accomplish some amazing things. Last Wednesday ii went up to the tri-cities and picked up Elder Liu. Brother Edwards (the brother I used to live with) was nice enough to wake up at 5:30 with me so we could head up there. Since Wednesday we have been working none stop. We need some more people to teach so we have just been trying to find all the time. We knocked easily over 100 doors this last week. Our mission is trying something new called OYM (open your mouth). It is not really new but we are trying to figure out ways to motivate the missionaries to find, teach and baptize so we can reach out goal of 711 baptisms in 2011. One of the weekly goals we are trying to get is talking to 84 people a week and inviting them to hear the lessons or something along those lines. In the 100 doors we knocked and throughout the days we were able to get 67. It is harder than I thought to talk to twelve people a day. But it is still very possible. We found like three people this week that told us we could come back and share the message of the Restoration with them. I am pretty excited about this one person named Jessie. We were trying to contact a less active member but they had moved. We started talking to him and he said he was alone now and just didn't have a lot of direction. So we told him we had a message that provides direction in our lives. He seemed really excited to hear it and we set up a return appointment for Wednesday night. We also ended up having some very good investigator lessons. We started teaching a young single adult named Fallon. He is just looking to make his life better. He is a dishwasher right now and just doesn't have a lot going for him. He is eager to learn and we put him on date for the 25th of March. There are some things that need to be taken care of and that is why it is so far away. We are also teaching Fallons brother John. John was one of the reasons our valentines was so good. We went over there and started talking to him. The missionaries have been going over there for a while now and all I think they have focused on his quiting smoking and drinking. I don't think he has ever really been taught. Elder Liu and I figured we would just try and teach him the restoration because there is no motivation to quit those things if he doesn't understand the blessing that could come from it and where it is coming. We had a great lesson and I think he really understood. He was asking the perfect questions and seemed really interested in changing his life around. We were taking the nice role and then just decided to be bold and put it all out there. It was really effective for him. We challenged him to start with the small things and then we would work to the bigger things of overcoming drinking and smoking. It is a testimony that is going to get him through the hard times when he wants to relapse. If he doesn't have a testimony he is on his own.

This week we had also planned to go to Wanda Steele's and drop her but we ended up having one of the best lessons we have had with her. We just told her exactly how baptism needs to be and explained the authority. She actually understood it and said it is finally making sense to her. It is funny how the Lord is constantly preparing people. She had a thing happen to her at the church she attends where it didn't sit right with her. She said she had seen it before but it really stood out to her this time for some reason. I wonder why that is? It is because of the spirit and how she is gaining a testimony of the things we are teaching. All three of these lessons have been full of the Spirit and whenever we walk out of those lessons we feel like we are walking on air. It is an amazing feeling.

Along with our investigators we have been trying to do some work with the less actives in the ward. We went over the ward list with our ward mission leader the other day and found out that there are 161 less active families/ individual last names on the roles in the McKay Creek Ward.It is like one in every three last names in our ward are less active. I must have been unaware before my mission but I never realized how many less actives there were. But they are all still sons and daughters of God and we need each one of them at church. With all those things we have been staying pretty busy. It is always so much better when you are staying busy and moving the work forward.

One last thing before I close; yesterday I got to do a baptismal interview for someone in our zone. I think those are some of my favorite times with investigators. Giving them that opportunity to bear their testimony and see how their lives have changed as they have come closer to our Heavenly Father. We each need to be constantly working on our relationship with our Heavenly Father and as we do this I know we will each see miracles and blessings happen in our lives each day. I hope you have a wonderful week and always remember to replace fear with faith.

Love,

Elder Scottie Draper