So Ann, the lady we found last Saturday that I told yall about last week, we did get to meet with last Monday. And picture the perfect 1st lesson: A member there to teach and testify, she had a desire to learn and accept our message, using the How to begin teaching points, teaching the Restoration, committing them to read and pray about the Book of mormon and Joesph Smith, AND committing to baptism, and she accepted it all! She is a super nice lady! She is Jewish but went to a Catholic School and so is familiar with Christian beliefs and she is even starting to feel the spirit! It was an incredible first lesson. Then she invited us back on Friday and we brought another member, Brother Coombs who is 81, but such a great teacher and helped a lot in our lesson! He related a lot to her because they are in the same age group. But in this second lesson we committed her to baptism on the 8th of August and she accepted. She understood why its important to. That is not common, sadly. She just gets things very quickly. After we finished teaching her about the plan of salvation we asked her what it meant to her to know this plan, and her response was simple but clear that she understood that it was a map to know how to get back to Heavenly Father! It was really sweet. She would have come to church, but she had to be with her grandkids this weekend, but I sure hope she will come next Sunday! We are teaching her again on Tuesday...sadly I will be on exchange, but I hope it goes well! She is such a miracle, and hope she continues to progress like she has been this past week!
Tuesday-Thursday was a little weird because we had to drop off our car at the shop to get some scratches fixed because of some previous missionaries never reporting them. So yeah, I knew that it would need to be fixed, but it wasn't too bad to get it fixed 2 and 1/2 days is a lot better than a whole week like it was up in Damariscotta when we got our car fixed. We were biking mostly everywhere while we didnt have a car. We were going to have a member meal but because they were really busy, Sister Adams called us and wrote down what we liked on our subway sandwiches, and met us on the street we were on and dropped them off to us with some powerade. haha And then we just biked down to a park near by to eat it! She was so sweet to do that for us!
On Wednesday we had district meeting and got to meet the new sister that Sister Achesbacher received. Her name is Sister Innes. She is from Arizona, and is brand new. She is really great though. Those sisters are on fire together! It is really great!
On Thursday I got to take Jeff with us out to eat to get some pizza! It was a lot of fun to be with him in a more casual setting! He is a great guy and in fact got to help with the sacrament this last Sunday. I am sure he will have the chance to bless the sacrament soon!
He drove us to get our car after lunch and we were then back to normal.
On the 4th of July it was raining, so Sanford postponed their parade and fireworks till the next day and it was perfect! Saturday was a BEAUTIFUL day. It was cool and clear in the morning. We live on Main st so the parade went right past our apartment! It was pretty fun to see, and got to talk to some of our neighbors that we thought were potentials. Sadly we felt them out pretty well, and they don't seem all that interested, but it was nice to talk with them as we watched the parade. We also got to Mason Van Gieson's baptism (8yrs old) He was the little boy who gave us that great referral! haha He asked us Elders to be the witnesses and be in his circle! It was really special to do that! And then once we finished language study we got to go with a bunch of members and see the fireworks and have ice cream with them! Sanford put on a pretty good show! I took a little bit of a video, so when I send me SD card home yall can see it! Our ward has a lot of younger families so there were a lot of little kids there, which was really fun! They fireworks are done just down the street from our apartment too! It was pretty great!
Then Sunday was pretty good! Brother Adam's, our Elders Quorum President, was out of town this week, so he called us the day before and asked if we could cover the lesson. We were happy to try and liven up Elder's Quorum. It is usually pretty dull...so it was fun to teach! I actually really love teaching classes on Sunday! We taught about the Aaronic Priesthood Duties and Responsibilities, but brought it back to President Eyring's talk from last Conference "The Priesthood Man". It went well! Anyway like I said Ann wasn't able to make it to church but some less active recent converts finally came to church this week, and it was really good to see them! They were baptized when Elder Stallings was here.
But yeah, everything is going well, and I know the Lord is always there to listen to our prayers and fasting only magnifies that! I was watching the restoration during lunch today in Portuguese, but this scripture never stood out to me so much till today and I really love it. Its in the scriptures a few times, but one of the references is Mathew 7:11
"If ye then...know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?"
If we ask, with faith, and it be righteous, our Father in Heaven will answer our prayers. But I have learned those blessings don't come without much work on our part! So pray hard, and then work hard!
Interesting enough this was on the home page of lds.org today:
https://www.lds.org/church/news/in-this-communication-age-how-effective-are-your-prayers?
I hope y'all have an amazing week!
-Elder Swalberg
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