Elder Hansen's surprise birthday party

Dear Family and Friends,

     Mom, I got your letter with Elder Murray's stories and the pictures. I can see Dad is getting gray hair on his temples... you're getting up there Dad. :) So this week we still had a lot of cake leftover from Elder Hansen's birthday, so we cut it up and took it to District Meeting on Tuesday. Every snatched it up so fast.  Needless to say, our Zone loves us now.

     Yesterday at church we didn't have an investigators class because the branch mission leader was too busy to prepare over the week. But it was a missionary Sunday, so Elder Hansen gave a talk. Then we joined Primary to help them learn how to sing 'A Child's Prayer'. Ha ha! they made us sing it alone, then we helped them patch it together. That was fun. For our little branch, we have a surprisingly large primary. The youth program is suffering right now, but in the future it will be huge.

     Our investigator, G., is having a little bit of trouble. Since he was contacted by missionaries over a year ago, he was preparing for baptism, but he traveled and lost contact with the missionaries. In his preparations he had to move out of his church; he had a chairperson position. When he lost contact, he went back, talked a lot with the men high up in the church, and they gave him back his position. Now that we have re-established contact, he's having trouble doing that again. He's just in an awkward situation. He's also trying to switch over his line of work from supplying alcohol to something else. But he has a powerful testimony already. He knows what he needs to do. He's been praying for strength and courage to change his life around. Every morning he gathers his kids together for a morning prayer to help him find another line of work and so forth. He would be a powerful member of the church. He loves his family and he knows how to take care of them--- which is kind of rare down in these parts. So he needs some prayers.

     So here's an update on C., the man in the wheelchair. So far we have taught him the Restoration, Plan of Salvation, and Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is surprisingly intelligent and literate; he's recovered very well from his stroke. Recently we've been pushing him hard to read and understand the Book of Mormon. And he has been. He always asks very good questions. The other day we sat down to discuss with him what he read, but he told us he hadn't read, so we returned a few days later. He had been reading in Jacob, and he asked a lot of good things, I can tell he's really trying to understand. Then he said, "I have to confess, I lied the other day when I told you I didn't read. I was reading; way ahead. I wanted to continue to observe how you taught, and I was also looking for something in the Book of Mormon that contradicted the Bible. If I had found something, I would have said, 'thank you very much', and I would have waved you off. But I didn't find anything. Everything in this book is good-o!" Ha ha! I laughed and told him that I had tried to do the same thing once, yielding the same results: the things in the Book of Mormon are testaments of Jesus Christ. GOOD THINGS. I admire C. for his clever investigation method, though. He reads a lot; he has nothing else to do. He normally sits up on the hill overlooking Petrol Roundabout in his wheelchair, under his umbrella, people-watching. We have seen the Jehovah's Witnesses visiting him every once in a while as we pass. They have started coming since we've been seeing him. I'm not worried though, C. is a smart man.  Oh yeah, C. (our recent convert) passed the sacrament on Sunday! He had no problem with it. He also met with a member of the Stake Presidency to prepare him to be ordained an Elder this coming Stake Conference... whenever that is.

Love,

Elder Doggett

P.S.  Thanks for the letters and continuing pictures. I want you to know that I really do appreciate them. There ARE more people to teach here because of the English. I noticed that pretty soon after I got here; people are much more educated. 

A young man's Duty to God notebook in the branch! :-)