The Peace of Knowing

This week was characterized by working with members, service, and disappointing things happening to our investigators.  The stomach flu has been going around Medford, so all of our main teaching appointments fell through because of it.  None of the missionaries have gotten sick yet, but it has made coming in contact with the people we are trying to work with tough.

The first few days mainly consisted of trying to find indoor service and cleaning out the apartment because of smoke that got trapped in the valley from a nearby fire.  My companion suffered from a fairly bad headache on Monday because of the smoke, so we took it easy and talked to an investigator named Steffano for the evening.  The next day we did our usual morning service and then had a good talk with an excommunicated member.  She is very nice and has an extremely strong testimony, and should hopefully be coming back to the church soon.

On Wednesday we had an apartment inspection that went well, and on Thursday we removed four tree stumps for an investigator of nearby Sister missionaries.  We also had to wait through a car transfer the mission is doing.  We also got to talk to Taylor, an investigator we found from a less active family named the Bakers.  She went above and beyond the reading commitment we left her, was marking her Book of Mormon, and was even considering baptism at some point.

Saturday was characterized by meeting with several investigators that went missing for a while, less active families, and encouraging members to become involved in the missionary work.  We had a lot of good meetings and were able to find several families who want to return back to church in the near future.  We had lessons and meetings all day and things were going very well.

Unfortunately, on Sunday we found out that one investigator named Bonnie had passed away due to a blood clot that came from a broken leg.  She was very sweet and we know that she is accepting the Gospel in the Spirit World.  The Spirit was fairly strong the rest of that day.  It is wonderful to know the peace of knowing the plan of salvation.  Finally, today we had a zone barbecue to celebrate Labor Day.

It has been a crazy week and a lot has happened, but the work will continue to push along.  Thank you for reading, and sorry for the lack of pictures, more will come next week.

Elder Baxter