Writings from West Virginia: A Week's Worth of Miracles

Hello friends and family! I hope your week has been as good as ours was! We saw some serious miracles this week, it was awesome! We are also set up for a slam-dunk of a week this week, with almost 10 appointments set up! I love it here in Fairmont. :) Here is a run down of this past week:

On Monday we went and saw the referrals that we contacted last Sunday, W., to teach him a little more. It just so happened that his wife, B., was there too! We were able to teach them both as a family and invite them to be baptized. It was a powerful lesson, and they are some really awesome and humble people who are ready for the gospel. We are seeing them this Wednesday, where we will invite them to be baptized on a specific date, and it's going to be great!

We were able to find two more new investigators on Tuesday! V.&P. have investigated before, but nothing had ever really gone anywhere. We talked to them on Tuesday and they told us that they feel that the Book of Mormon is true. Probably the reason why nothing ever went anywhere is because missionaries have been too afraid to ask them to do hard things. Our next appointment with them we are going to invite them to do some changing (repenting) and invite them to "walk with us" into the true church. I also had the chance on Tuesday to meet P., a man who has been investigating for a while who is slowly but surely progressing! He is awesome. He works for the FBI and has a sweet New York/Italian accent.

On Wednesdays we do service at a place called The Soup Opera, a kind of Salvation Army-esque food kitchen where we serve less-fortunate people a hot meal. I got to meet everyone that we work with there, and they are all HILARIOUS. We have a good time, and it always feels good to give service to people who can't provide for themselves. We were also able to see P. on Wednesday! We taught him about the covenant that he will make when he is baptized, and during the closing prayer, he actually prayed that he will be able to be baptized on his date! It was awesome. He is slowly recovering, but he has a will of Iron! We also were able to teach the C.'s, pretty much the most solid family ever, Tuesday night. It's amazing to me how much they really want to be baptized. C. wasn't able to come on Sunday, but 16 year old C. came all by himself to church! It was great. I was so proud of him. He even talked about serving a mission in a couple years after I testified to what a great and life changing experience it is. We are praying mightily for a miracle to happen with them so that their unique situation can be resolved and they can enter into the waters of baptism. I also made some bomb.com chili for like $6 on Wednesday night, too. That's now like my go-to meal haha.

Thursday night we were able to pick up another new investigator just by talking to him on the street, as well as find a less-active member, D., who wants to come back to church! It's amazing what success you can find when you just open your eyes and look for the possibilities. We have appointments with both of these wonderful people this week.

Friday was Zone Meeting! The first Zone Meeting since JUNE that I got to sit with everyone else, and it was WONDERFUL. I enjoyed every second of it. I also got to see a TON of people that I love up there! We have an AWESOME zone! Elder Bean, who I trained, is in our zone and I got to see him! As is Elders Vai and Tunnell, who were in my zone in BV for a little while. Elder Millard, one of my best friends, is my zone leader, and even the Assistants, Elder Williams and Elder Jacklin, were there! It was a great day. We learned about teaching skills especially for beginning teaching investigators and less-actives. We got to role-play a little bit on "How to Begin Teaching" which was a lot of fun.

Saturday we saw P. and the C's again! D. was with the C.' this time, too! We taught P. about prayer and the proper method of it, and we restarted the lessons for CCD (hah) so C.'s son in case you forgot) can get caught up. He had a TON of questions about the Book of Mormon, and it was awesome! We didn't even get a chance to answer them all because it got too late, haha. We're going back tomorrow to answer the rest.

The Sabbath was a wonderful day! 3 nice families fed us! I think that kinda defeated the purpose of Fast Sunday, but it was still super nice of them! Brother & Sister F., whom we take the sacrament to, gave us some awesome ribs, the M.'s gave us lasagna, and the H.'s made some awesome stuffed shells. People take real good care of us here. We also met the P.'s, a less-active family who run their own embroidery company. It's pretty sweet! They are planning on being at church on Sunday!

This area is great. Miracles are pouring forth! Thank you all for your support of me. Huge shout out to my best friend Ryan who completed his two year service this past week. Love you buddy!

Love,

Elder Brax Johnson