Wow this week was one of my busiest weeks thus far in the mission! I thought about just putting all of the numbers I had regarding lessons/investigators on date/investigators who attended sacrament meeting etc..but something tells me I shouldn't. Don't get me wrong staying busy is awesome. I just don't want to give the impression that the mission is all about numbers, because it isn't.
Just to put it in perspective. We cover a whole stake! The Pleasant View South Stake. Utah missions are really the only missions in the world where only 1 companionship covers a stake and it's pretty normal to do that here. Everywhere else it's usually 1 companionship to a Ward or two. This stake has 11 wards! So that means 11 bishops, Ward mission leaders, Elders Quorum Presidents etc.. Out of those 11 wards, 8 of them have real investigators that we are working with. So we work with pretty much all the wards on a regular basis. This week however, it seemed that we had a lesson with ALL of our investigators. Which there are a lot of so if you can imagine from 6pm to 9pm we are just teaching like crazy. Which is awesome!
What's even more cool is that these lessons actually go somewhere. When the Holy Ghost is your constant companion throughout these lessons, you definitely increase others faith in Christ. And this faith leads to BAPTISM!!
We have 3 solid baptisms lined up for the next 3 weeks and we have 1 solid baptism lined up for March (it's later due to the fact that his parents live 8 hours away). On top of these people who are ready for baptism we have a lot more who are just so close to accepting a date. It is only a matter of time.
What I like most about this mission is that a lot of the people we baptize are children with inactive families. So we baptize the children and if you do it right the families come back to church and stay. I have seen this happen with All of the baptisms Elder Sagmeister and I have had and it is awesome! The first baptism we had their family is currently working to be sealed in the temple and I can't wait for that day when I get to see that family get sealed.
I had the opportunity to go to the Brigham City Temple today with the zone and as I sat in the celestial room I just felt so much joy. Sports and airplanes make me happy and I can't imagine life without those things but as I sat in the temple I felt a lot more happier than I would with the worldly things in this life. Eternal exaltation is truly God's greatest gift that he has ever given to man.
I had another thought today. As many of you know my mom does foster care for little children and I have the up most love and respect for my Mother because of that. I feel like one of the tender mercies that the Lord has given me was the opportunity to help my mom with the foster children. I have not had a baptism who is over the age of 10 yet. I work with children a lot and I honestly feel that what my mom did prepared me a lot for this specific mission and I just find that incredible.
Also today after I went to the temple, Elder Benson our stake senior missionary drove us up to the mission office in Logan to pick up some name tags I ordered. I remembered that my family settled in Logan way back in the very early 1900's and I remembered where their first house in America was and I drove by it and took a couple pictures. I just figured maybe my grandma would like that or something.
I'm sorry I wrote a lot but it's the time I have to write these emails that I just think about how awesome the work is going in this area.The transfer is already halfway done so I may only have 3 more weeks
in the area which stinks. The mission is awesome the church is true.
Love,
Elder Skabelund
P.S. GO CARDINALS!!!
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