Remain Faithful

Hello everyone,

I feel like I have been through a spiritual roller coaster the past week.  To start, on Tuesday we found out the AP's were coming to our area for an exchange.  I later learned that this is something they try to do for most of the new missionaries, but the pressure went up for planning quickly for a unplanned event.  The exchange went very well overall, and we had some great study sessions as well as being able to find a couple great new investigators throughout the day.  By the time they left we were feeling pretty great about everything.  We were even able to get a hold of a couple of younger boys that had dropped off the map for a while who want to be baptized!

As with all spiritual experiences though, opposition does come.  Following a district meeting that I feel went well about our missionary purpose, all of our return appointments for the new investigators fell through.  It didn't feel like anyone was home.  In fact, one of the more promising ones had a man answer the door who more or less told us to never come back and avoided telling us if the person we were looking for was home which broke our hearts, as well as hearing that another investigator wasn't interested from a third party source.  It definitely felt as if the devil was on us.  But God always prevails.

On Saturday, the sisters in our district had a baptism.  It was nice to see and President Orton as well as Elder Hoskins, now my zone leader, come as well.  Miracles also started to come.  We are put through tests sometimes to see if we will remain faithful despite whatever happens, and if we endure well that is when the blessings flow.  We finally got in contact with an entire family named the King's who have been taught for a while.  We got to reestablish connection and see how cool they were.  They will definitely be baptized some day, they already are dry Mormons basically.  On top of that, we also saw the Trivett family.  The son wants to be baptized and is praying for a date while the Mom is taking large steps in getting the testimony she once had back.  It was great being able to testify of how the Atonement of Jesus Christ can help us past anything.

The work continues to move forward, and as General Conference approaches I would encourage you all to take a question you have to it and be prepared to have the Spirit testify to you!  Thank you for all of the support!

Elder Baxter

Let the sun shine

Working together

Beauty everywhere