Monday, February 29, 2016

Many Miracles & A New Car! Woo Hoo 02/29/16

Whelp, this week was the first week of the 7 week transfer because of the change in MTC stays for English missionaries, we have an extra week tacked onto this Transfer! Boy was it a blessed week here in Chatham. We got here Tuesday from transfers in our brand new 2016 Nissan Rouge, it's so nice! It even had the stickers and everything on it. It had 50km total... Once we got to Chatham after the long car ride however we went to work searching for people to teach. We don't have a lot of super interested investigators we are teaching so we went out to search for those elect! So I know Mom wants to know all about my new companion Elder Certonio. He has been out on his mission for 3 months, he is from Spanish Fork, which means he is my first companion from Utah! We get along super well, back at home he loved Snowboarding and watching Italian soccer. His family is Italian, so it makes sense! He has 3 siblings and his dad is a paramedic! There's a quick bit about him!

Tuesday night we were down town Chatham contacting people on the street when two guys approached us and asked if they could pray with us, he then put his hands on our shoulders and prayed asking if we would be able to feel the Lord's Love, when he finished he asked if we had ever felt that before and Elder Certonio said "Yeah, it's the spirit." It took this man, Mike, by surprise and he went on to talk about how they are part of a street ministry group called "Awake the Nation" which focuses on helping people to know God is there by showing them tangible things such as healings and things of that nature. It's hard to expain and doesn't really matter all that to the story. We went on to tell him about our role of helping people develope faith in Jesus Christ, and told him about a story from the Bible where Jesus Christ tells Thomas that "Blessed is he who has not seen but believes." (It was the first time I've been able to use the Bible on the Street to really teach, usually people use it as a bashing weapon so we avoid using it, but with him we felt we could really teach him with it.) It really caught his attention and you could see him running over everything we said in his mind! We then kept talking and he asked what else we teach, we talked with him about Authority is something we teach about, and used a scripture out of Acts 8 to help him understand a bit more, that really caught his attention! He then asked about how the Book of Mormon really came to be and seemed like he had some Anti up his sleeve to throw at us, so be took a copy out and read to him straight out of the Introduction, which answered his question! We gave him the copy and set up another time to meet! He came to us originally to try to convert us to is ways, but found himself pulled in by the Spirit! Such an amazing miracle!

Wednesday was rainy and freezing cold! I can testify that rain is way worse then snow when you're out in it and the wind is blowing! We were soaked to the bone, so we decided to go out by some Less-Active members way out in the country. We were able to meet a few of them and teach a lesson. Besides the rain and wind, it was wonderful :)

Thursday we had to drive down to Windsor because I had to give my first Baptismal Interview! it was an awesome experience, it was so cool to be there with someone who had just discovered the restored gospel, and he had such a sweet testimony. My favorite was asking him the last question which is "When you are baptized you make a covenant with God to take upon yourself the name of Jesus Christ and keep the Commandments, are your ready to make this covenant and strive to be faithful to it?" It was such a powerful experience! 

Sunday was the day of miracles, it was such an amazing day! We started off with a church, which was wonderful as always, we then had an appointment about 30 minutes away in Ridgetown, when we got to our appointment, we weren't able to find them and they weren't home which was depressing, but we were having dinner with a family out that way so we headed over there and had a wonderful pancake dinner, and their kids kept saying "come outside and play with us" so we went outside with them for 5 minutes and their chickens had gotten out of their coop, so we chased them down and caught them and put them back in the coop, turns out this family also are shi tzu breeders, and they have like 12 Shi Tzu's! After dinner is when the miracles started happening one after another.

We stopped by our Investigator Kerra, she is a young mom, and we haven't been able to sit down and have a solid lesson with her, but we have talked with her a lot. Every time we drop by there isn't a 3rd male so we can't go in and teach, but every time we set an appointment, something falls through and she has to cancel or we do. And, like normal, yesterday her Boyfriend wasn't home, but we talked at the door for a few minutes and the biggest miracle of the week, she mentioned how her lawyer invites her out to his church all the time so I asked her if her Lawyer's last name was Sandor, she went on to tell us that it was him and she was like a Dad to her! Well, that is actually President Sandor, the Stake President in the London Stake here! Turns out she has had the influence of the church from two directions so far! We gave her a Book of Mormon to read and she texted us last night letting us know she was nearly half way done and wanted a bible as well! :D MIRACLES! 

We then went by a potential investigator named James, who was sick, but wanted us to come back again next week, he even said "Ah man, I really want to sit down and talk, but I've got the flu" I'm kinda glad he didn't invite us in, because you could tell he was sick by the way he looked!

We then have been trying to find a Less-Active girl who was a referral for us, we only knew where her Mom and Boyfriend live so we went by there and talked to her mom's boyfriend, who was like "Ya man, she just lives around the corner" I had to put in the "ya man" because he is from Trinidad and they always say that. Turns out she was home and super happy to see us, we even set up a time to meet with her this week and she wants to come out to church again!

The Last miracle of the day, it was 8 o'clockand we were prompted to go by a Less-Active family, so we did and they let us right in! The mother told us that she is kicking her smoking habit, and her daughter came in to listen to the lesson, pretty soon her roomate Will came in as well and wanted to learn more about the Book of Mormon. Yesterday was such a cool day, full of many miracles! 

That's it for this week from Elder Taylor and Elder Certonio! Love you all!

Elder Taylor


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