August 29, 2016

Alright, so this week started off with a miracle! 

Monday- we are working with this Less Active named Mandy Moles, she is a huge blessing in our lives, she is so funny and witty. We have been working with her over the past couple of weeks and really have built trust with her. On Sunday her Mom who is very active came up to Elder Manos and started to just sob and thank for our efforts with her daughter. 

Apparently she has been so devoted to praying for her daughter to come back to the fold. Every time she would go to the temple she would put her on the prayer list and cry out in prayer every day to have something happen to have her back at church. Mandy would of never had missionaries at her house or would ever invite them back... 

This last week we saw Mandy, her mom and a friend. We were able to start out with a great conversion of getting to know each other that just faded right into a spiritual discussion. We taught a very powerful lesson about "receiving answers through reading the Book of Mormon". By the end of the lesson i asked if everyone can feel the spirit that was there. and Mandy answered with an excited "YES" because thats just how she is haha. After Brother Spencer and Elder Manos bore testimony about the Book of Mormon we left the commitment to study the scriptures with the purpose of finding the answers to the questions of your heart. Mandy was very excited to try this promise from the lord out haha 

Afterwards we had our "Family Home Evening" activity and ate M&Ms, fruit and played catch phrase and the evening that Mandy and her mother were very nervous about turned out to be the best thing they could of expected and were anxious to do it again soon!

Later in the week we had a great Mission Tour and Mission Leadership Council from Elder and Sister Hamula of the Seventy that was kind of the launch of changing almost everything about the mission. In short we talked a lot about being ready to lay it all down for the Lord,. Forgetting about yourself, Trusting in Him to take care of the rest, and living a consecrated lifestyle. It is something that the mission was needing because we have been seeing a trend of missionaries lacking in that aspect. Needless to say that the Tour was AWESOME. The Mission Leadership Council was very closely related to the tour but telling us more straight out that EVERYTHING is going to change in the mission.

We are very excited. its something that we have been hoping will change in the work. The Lord knows best :)

Love all of you!

Elder Mark Howland