Hello!
Well sadly Martin Luther King Jr. made it so that we could not check our emails last week. Its okay though...I still respect the man...just holidays aren't always a missionaries favorite days when it lands on a P-day. haha
So although it was a sort of boring P-day we got to have FHE with the Doray family (Chrissy, Brother Doray, Andie, and the youngest boy Terry). We did a FHE lesson on the plan of salvation. And we used a string to represent eternity and used a glow stick I got for Christmas to represent out spirit and put it on the string and moved it along the string as we went through teaching the plan of salvation. Andie and Terry loved it! haha It was a simple object lesson, but thats all it takes sometimes for them to get more involved and excited about learning about the gospel. Then we got to do exchanges with the Zone Leaders! One of our new Zone Leaders is Elder Pritchet who was my Zone Leader when I was back in New Hampshire/Vermont! He had been on an exchange just 2 weeks earlier in MY FIRST AREA! I asked about Troy immediately and he said he is doing well and that he thinks he ended up getting to go to the temple. Ah I was so jealous of him being there! I miss those people there so badly! But Damariscotta was one of his first areas (about 11/2 years ago)! So we got to see a lot of our recent converts (Norm and Lisa and James) who he was teaching while he was here! It was so cool for him to see them! I had him go through the Branch Directory to help identify some of the Less actives that we didn't know yet and it helped a lot! He gave us referrals to specific people he thought would be ready at this point to revisit and more! It was such a blessing to have him there that day!
We got to meet with our new district on Wednesday in Augusta Maine. The Augusta ward has elders and sisters as well and we also have the Gardiner Elders in our district as well. And they are a trio so we now have 11 missionaries in our district! How crazy?! We even had our Zone leaders there on Wednesday so we had 13 missionaries at our district meeting! It more like a mini Zone Meeting! It will be fun though. The sisters and us Elders here in Damariscotta are pretty close now, so its going to be kind of hard to open up to so many new missionaries in our district, especially when we had such a close district the last 2 transfers. But we are determined to make it great!
After district meeting we got to go see Frank! He has been reading the Book of Mormon on and off, but he was one of those who was going to come to church for our Christmas program, but didn't because it got canceled from the snow. Well we read some of the Book of Mormon with him because he asked us a great question of "Why does God allow so much suffering to happen?" and were able to go to Alma chapter 14 and read about Alma and Amulek's experience in watching so many of the believers be thrown into the pit of fire and being constrained by the spirit to not stop it. It not only answered his question but it also allowed us to be able to read with him to help him understand how the Book of Mormon reads and how to understand the language of it better. (that was something he said he was struggling with) And he got really excited by the story that followed about them being put in prison and then the prison falling to the ground and the multitudes being amazed and then believing on their words. He said it was really interesting and that we wanted to read more from "this Alma book" haha. And he committed to church again....but guess what it snowed Saturday night and I think it detered him again. He is an older guy so he doesn't like to have to go out in it if he doesn't have to. So it was sad that he didn't make it but he still is open to us coming over and talking with and teaching him. So thats huge especially because this all just started by offering them some service help! I love Frank so much! I hope he starts to progress here soon!
We got to have 8 Less Active/ Recent Convert Lessons this week which was way awesome! The typical number out here for those is closer to 4 or 5. Anyway the big miracle there was starting to meet with this man named Richard. He is a less active (30 yrs old) and is trying to come back to church and get his life back together. He invited us for dinner as well as a lesson on Sunday, yesterday. And not only was it an amazing dinner, but had a great lesson and essentially found out that we just need to go through the investigator lessons with him, because he just lacks a lot of the basic gospel knowledge, but has a testimony of it though. So it was cool as we focused on the Atonement and that it is the central part to the Plan of Salvation. He committed to study more about it and he is also wanting to come to our Book of Mormon Class that we starting this Wednesday. So He will benefit a lot from that as well.
The Book of Mormon Class is going to be a great tool for us to be able to invite less actives and investigators too. I know some members want to be there also! I am really looking forward to having that every week on Wednesday!
Well I feel like I have a good update written up, but there are still so many other miracles that I still would love to share, but I recognize I can't share them all! But that's the great thing about being on a mission, is that you get to recognize the little miracles and big ones happen everyday! They happen, and are very much real! Look back at you past week and think about how the Lord's hand played a role in your life and then write it down! You will be amazed every time at how much He is involved in our lives!
I love this gospel, I love this work, and I love my Heavenly Father! I know He is there for me and for each of you!
And I love all y'all too! :)
-Elder Swalberg
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