It's Beginning To Look Like Christmas (12/22/14)

Hello my family and friends how is everyone doing this week! I hope that all is well and everyone is getting into the Christmas season the right way! Man things this week have been pretty great! I mean when its Christmas time things always have to be great right? So this past was filled with answered prayers. Me and my companion have been really striving to find new investigators while continuing to take care of our recent converts. So this week we received lots of referrals from our Zone Leaders and we got the chance to visit with many of them. Also Sister Shonga the mother of all of the kids we have baptized told us about friends that she has that lived near her that were interested in the gospel. So we actually found 8 new people to teach and that was definitely a miracle. All of them will be great but there were four of them that im pretty excited for! Two of them are brothers that we contacted Mwenda and also Robby his brother. They are super sweet! We visited with them and they are so great. Robby said that its exactly what he’s been wanting and that he was looking forward to. He said that he is facing some obstacles but he wants to be back close to God and overcome these weaknesses. We were able to share a little about Christ and the power of the Atonement and it really touched him. I am super excited to see what happens. Two of the other ones that we are excited for are Mumbi and Boyd. They are two friends that we visited with on Saturday and we had the opportunity to just sit with them and talk and discuss. The one that really seemed excited was Mumbi. He is 20 years old and he grew up in the village until he was about 18 years old and that’s when he came to the city here to study at the University. He told us that in the village education isn’t really the biggest priority and since he is the first born in his family he knew that it was up to him to make it. He knew that he needed to graduate high school and then go to school. He said that he wants to study Economics and then he wants to own his own business that deals with the imports and the exports here in Zambia. He said that he loves reading and so the excitement in his eyes was so great when we shared with tem both the Book of Mormon. He is so sweet and great. I just am so excited! Honestly Heavenly Father answers our prayers in little ways that sometimes we don’t even see or understand. So other than that our week was great. We had lots of investigators at church and we were able to see many of our people and teach them. Overall it was succccch a great week! I guess I can share two of the more spiritual things that impacted me this week above all else. One of which was our lesson with our investigator Emmanuel Shonga (the older brother to our 4 recent converts.) So I know that I have mentioned him a few times before so we are pretty excited for him. Just a recap Emmanuel is 19 (turning 20) on Christmas and he is a very smart educated young guy. He is a Catholic with his father and the rest of their family are members. Emmanuel we have taught about 5 times now and we really haven’t made a lot of progress but the last two times have been pretty great. He said that he knows everything about the church and the Restoration and he has prayed but he hasn’t been able to receive an answer. We shared with him Ether 12:6 and also Moroni 7:13-14. We had a powerful lesson yesterday about the Restoration. He told us that he understands that we are Christians and if we are Christians that means we follow Christ and do what he does. We explained more of the priesthood and also the apostasy. The spirit was there and I could see that he got it. He said that he has been praying to know if it’s true and he said he always feels good when he prays but he has a lot of doubts and questions and son we told him he needs to have faith. Then as we ended the lesson I invited him to pray for us and to also pray specifically in the prayer to know if the church is true and if the Book of Mormon was true. I can’t really express the way that I felt during that prayer. All I can say is that I had tears in my eyes and I felt It in my heart. God definitely works in mysterious ways. I pray that Emmanuel will not let fear and doubts cloud the truth because I know that blessings await him and I know that it strengthened my testimony too.