Writings from West Virginia: Family History and 2 Miracles!!!

Hello friends and family!

This week was a great one! It's hard to top last week, seeing as how we got to meet with an Apostle and all, but this week was certainly one of the best!

Monday we were still recovering from our sicknesses, so we slept like 14 hours until Tuesday morning when we were good to go!

On Wednesday we got to do some service with M., helping out some people that we have been seeing for a few months, K. and T. It was a good visit, and K. makes good pizza!

After that we headed to the Genealogy Center to help them prepare for their conference on Saturday! Made a lot of copies and put together a lot of packets. It gives me an appreciation for what mom does. Putting together a conference for 100 people was hard, I can't imagine 150 times that many. Go mom!

We also got to teach C. on Wednesday! We re-taught her the plan of salvation and related it to the temple experience that she is having next month! We are so excited for her, and she is so excited too! Just a whirlwind of excitement. It is kind of weird to be trying to prepare someone for the temple. I was prepared for 18 years before I received my blessings, and we have a month to do it for her. Anyway! She is an awesome lady.

On Thursday we helped out at the Food Kitchen again! Such a great experience, as always. It does your heart good when people will come into the back where I was just to say thank you for the meal. It's not like we're feeding them a lot, or giving them anything to take home to help, but these poor and humble people are still thankful just for a lunch. How cool is that?

I also on Thursdays get the chance to call my awesome district! Just say a quick prayer for The Bluefield sisters and the Hillsville Elders. Both areas are awesome and all four missionaries are the coolest things that ever was. I have a pretty awesome district.

On Friday the church released their "He Lives" initiative! Go check out HeLives.mormon.org if you haven't seen it yet! It's an amazing video that brings miracles! An account of one such miracle shall be given hereafter. ;D Thanks to The F. Family's Apple Computer, we were able to burn the video to a CD to show to all the people who don't have internet at their house! We showed the video to J. and N., plus J.'s two grandkids. It was a great experience and we were able to teach the meaning of easter to all four of them! I love it when kids are there, because you are teaching them in super simple language, but the older, wiser people are also learning!

On Saturday we got an early start at 7:30 in the morning to help the Genealogy Center set up at the Wytheville Meeting Center (which is a really nice building) for their Family History Institute conference! :) It was a bunch of fun. We helped put things out and set things up, and we stuck around for the first seminar just in case they needed big strong men like us.

Not too much else happened Saturday, except we got to go play basketball at the church! Most of the time it is just the Hillsville Elders and us, and maybe one other person, but this time The Hillsville elders brought three of their Recent Converts; J., G., and J. ! They in turn brought their home teacher, the awesome Brother N.! Woo hoo! We had so much fun. I forgot how much fun it it when people are actually there and playing! Got really tired, drank a protein shake, and went to bed after that.

The best day of the week was on Sunday! In the mornings before church, we have a correlation meeting with Brother Wh., our Ward Mission Leader. Recently we have been going down to a town called Ivanhoe to get Brother Wh.'s cousin and our investigator, D., who comes to church! Well, we were running a little behind yesterday and didn't get back to the chapel until 9:15. It was really quiet, and I realized that the sacrament was being passed. We had missed it! I was so sad. I love the sacrament. Well, just after we came in, the bishop gets up to the podium. There had been a mistake with the sacrament and it had to be redone! (For those who don't know, the sacrament, like communion in other churches, is done meticulously every Sunday. Most things in the church allow for flexibility, but one of the things that does not is this. It is a continuation of Jesus Christ's commandment to his disciples to partake of the bread and wine in remembrance of him.) So, because it had to be redone, we got to partake of the sacrament and renew our covenants! The Lord was watching out for us. As Brother Wh. loves to say, "Nothing happens by chance."

After an amazing church meeting, (wherein three investigators came!), we were mingling in the chapel with our amazing members and investigators. A former investigator who comes to church every week, J., came up to talk to me. Long story short, she told me she wants to get baptized, and I set her on date for May 10th! Right there in the chapel! Holy awesome!

After a great day of seeing people, we headed to D. and D.'s house! They are a part member family who came to church for the second time in a row yesterday! D.'s mom just passed into eternity two days ago, and they, understandably, have been a little stressed with all the things going on. We get over there, and lo and behold our Relief Society President and her husband, The F. family are already there having dinner with them! The Lord had been preparing this night for a long time, let me tell you. After the small talk thing that people do, and talking about her (D's) moms death for a while, we started to get into the spiritual side of the conversation. We thought it a great time to show "He LIves." It was. It brought such a palpable spirit into the room! I started directing my comments to D., our investigator. He got emotional as we asked him about how he felt at church. He could hardly express the feeling he gets in the chapel. It was amazing. We read parts of 3 Nephi 11 with him. Specifically the part about the resurrected Christ and baptism. We invited him to be baptized on May 10th, and I didn't even get the invitation out before he started nodding and committed. What a guy! He is so elect and golden. The Lord has prepared him for his whole life for this moment, and we are excited for him.

I love you all! Thank you all for your continued support and prayers. Make this week the best week ever! I'll talk to you all next week!

Love,

Elder Brax Johnson