This past week has been really awesome!! Many awesome miracles
happened. But first off, the transfer results are in.... Elder Neeley
and I are both staying! YAAAAAY! Thank goodness. I had a slight
worry that I had a chance of being transferred but all is well in Zion
and I will still be here. The Twin Cities YSA ward is the bomb. I
love this area and glad I get to stay. Plus we have several awesome
things coming up that I wouldn't want to miss.
So the news about __________ is actually still not sure. We didn't
get to talk to him on the phone all week because he has no service in
his house. But we are almost certain that he still is going to be
baptized. The ward kinda would rather have us do the baptism on the
28th, push it off a week so that we aren't throwing together a really
quick baptism. But I have a feeling that he is going to want to do it
this saturday, so we'll see. We called the branch president in the
branch where ___________ lives and he said that _______ came to church
and bore is testimony on fast sunday. He is doing great. I'll
probably send out an email later today to let you know what the plan
is! He is going to meet us at the institute in just a little while.
More miracles! We met with A*, our friend that is applying to BYU.
We met with her on Monday and had a really great lesson and then that
night she called us and said that she wanted to be baptized on the
21st! Woo! That was one dang exciting call. We had two other
lessons with her last week and decided to push the baptism back one
week to the 28th so that we can have a little more time to teach her
everything. She is doing super great and is excited! She even had
her interview with the Bishop yesterday for her ecclesiastical
endorsement for her BYU application. I'm sure that she will be
accepted and then Michael can be friends with her at BYU! Yay! That
would be really cool.
But I'm not done! Do you remember ____________? She is the one who
was a referral from the return missionary. Well, she is just solid to
the max. We met with her again and finally taught her the
restoration. We invited her to be baptized on February 4th and she
not only said yes, but she said "absolutely". Ha ha. She is pumped
and really loving the church. It's so great. In fact, she already is
signed up to take an institute class on the Book of Mormon this
semester. ____________ is taking an institute class too. But yeah,
it's going to be a great month!
OHHHH! So I just took like an hour break because ________ showed up at
the institute. Things are great and he is set for his baptism this
week! It is going to be great! And he asked me to baptize him. IT"S
SO EXCITING!
And then, our other investigator ____________ is doing pretty well
too. We have a lot to help her understand still. A lot. But we are
working on it and she is preparing to be baptized on Feb 18th.
This week will hopefully be super extra busy because the semester is
finally starting. They start tomorrow. So all of our investigators
that went home for the break will be back and we can teach a lot of
lessons. That will be great.
Last week ended in quite a bang too because one of the sisters
investigators got baptized. She is like the coolest person ever. The
best part is that she asked Elder Neeley to baptize her and then I got
to confirm her on sunday. That was so awesome. Elder Neeley
definitely had one of the most eventful first transfers of any
missionary in minnesota. We saw 2 people get baptized and then he got
to baptize someone himself that he didn't even teach. We are so
blessed. I can't even believe how well the work is going right now.
We have a lot to be grateful for!
On top of all these things, we are still doing a class every thursday
night for the students who don't know anything about God. Last week
was successful when the sisters got 3 chinese people to come and we
had a guy from india come. The guy from India even came to church.
Indian people are possibly some of my most favorite people in the
world. They are so nice! And for church yesterday, another one of
our investigators came to church that we never thought we would be
able to get to come. That was exciting!
But to be honest, of all those amazing things that happened this week,
probably my favorite part was when _______ (who was baptized last
month) was asked to give a talk in church yesterday about his
conversion story and his testimony. He gave a talk yesterday and
_______ was asked to give a similar talk next week. But his talk was
so powerful and so sincere. He just talked about the things that were
happening in his life before we started teaching him and how he really
got his answer that it was true and how it has been a blessing to him
thus far. I loved it so much! A lot of the things that he shared he
never actually told us while we were teaching him. It is just a
testimony that the Holy Ghost is the one in charge here and we as
missionaries just need to trust that God is going to take care of
these people we are trying to teach. He does give answers and he
always listens. This church is so true!
It looks like I got my wish :) the temperature dramatically dropped
during the week. It was 50 degrees earlier in the week and then it
fell to 10. That was a dramatically cold change. But it has been
fun. I finally have all the winter stuff whipped out. I'm sure it is
only going to keep dropping and dropping. Today was nice though.
It's gonna be a good week!
As I look back and read what I wrote, I realize how horrible of a
writer I am. i just ramble and splurge all my thoughts into the
keyboard, but hey, I guess that's me. So hopefully my letter makes
cognitive sense and you can be as happy reading this as I am writting
it. We have some wonderful weeks ahead! I'm looking forward to the
next transfer.
Love you!
Elder Ruesch
