August 23, 2010

Hey Family,
We had a sweet week this week. We were blessed with a chance to do some service to a potential investigator. Her name is M, we were in her neighborhood the other day and thought we should stop by. We had set up a couple appointments to come and teach her, but they fell through. We stopped to see her, and she was in a panic. She has a low spot on the side of her home where rain water collects real bad so a while back she had some dirt delivered to level it all out. The men that were supposed to come by to level out this huge pile of dirt never showed up. She had just received a notice from the city that she had 5 days to move this "nuisance" (I think that's how you spell it) off her lawn or she was going to be fined. She has no money nor the ability to do it, and she was just in tears with the question what she was going to do. We said that we would come by in the morning and take care of it all. So we shoveled for a few of hours the next morning and got it all taken care of. She was just in shock that we would even consider helping her even though we barely knew her. She didn't even think that we were going to come back in the morning. She kept asking why, why we do this kind of thing for people, why we are on a mission, why we offer service and help people. We just simply told her that we loved her and help out anyone in need. She was pricked to the heart just receive this simple service. We were able to set up a teaching appointment after we were all done. Yesterday she called us before the appointment and told us to come over to dinner instead. So we did, and we got to meet her boyfriend and were able to get to know them more, as well answered all the questions she had about the church. We now are going to go back this week and teach her more. We have been so blessed with service to open the door to teaching some one else about Christ.
We had Stake conference in Davenport yesterday, we had 2 investigators there. LB is the man. He's one of our newest investigators. He was there and we were able to go to the recent convert-investigator class before the meeting. He liked stake conference. One of the reasons he went was to see Elder Wilson and I sing in the choir, so he gave us a hard time about that. We were over at his house on Saturday teaching him about the Plan of Salvation. He told us before we got started that he had read that morning in the Book of Mormon, so we asked him if he had any questions about it, and how he liked it. He stated, "I really like Nephi and the way he talks. It's easy to understand him." He then told us that as he was reading, something hit him. In his own words he said, "I had a revelation about Joseph Smith. It just all came together that he had to be a prophet. If he wasn't a prophet, the church would not be here today. It would have all fallen when he died." How incredible, here is a man that has been seeking, and praying about the truth. He had the spirit touch him, and he recognized it and now is coming closer to Jesus Christ. What a testimony builder this week to the words of Moroni in 10:3-5. I love being a Mormon, where else would you have something like this happen, what a blessing.
I LOVE YOU ALL -Elder Hale