Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Baptisms, Zone Conference, and Snow in March

March 15, 2016

Hello!!!!

So since it's daylight savings, most of you will get my emails on average an hour earlier! Yippee!!! I hate daylight savings. Like its cool because you get more sun but in the spring you set your clocks forward an hour so you lose an hour of sleep. So now all you Arizonan's are on Pacific Time and I'm stuck on Mountain Standard Time
or Mormon Standard Time whichever way you look at it.

So one of my buddy's on a mission sent out an email saying that only in Arizona do we say cheese crisp for a cheese quesadilla and it's so true. No one know what a cheese crisp. I've said it more and more often just to test this theory and everyone I mention it too has never heard of a cheese crisp. Random fact.

So yeah the work is going good here. We had 3 baptisms today. 1 on Friday evening and 2 on Saturday morning. The first one was an investigator named Josh. He was a referral from a lady in the Ward back in November and we've been teaching him since then. He wanted to be baptized, but he had one silly concern. He wanted to wait until June to be baptized so he could be baptized in a spring on his boss' ranch. We were teaching him one night in January and he knew everything to be baptized but he still had that concern. I finally asked him if he has ever prayed and asked God to see what he should do because sometimes it's not about what you want but it's about what God wants. He said he hasn't and he said he would pray about it. The next week I asked him if he prayed and he said he got an answer to be baptized on March 11 in a baptismal font. It was so specific so that was pretty cool and he held true to his answer.

The other 2 baptisms are Ivan and Julian. They are brothers and Ivan is 11 and Julian is 13. Their mom and mom's boyfriend take car of them and the whole family are nonmembers. They are from Montana and they recently moved to Utah in December. They lived with their family friend who is lds and then they bought a trailer to live in just north of their friends. We found out what house they lived in and we knocked the door in February. The mom answered and agreed to have the lessons. The first lesson we had was great. Everyone was there but the boyfriend. It was a pretty powerful lesson and all 3 of them accepted a date to be baptized on the first lesson. We continued teaching the family and the boyfriend kept listening in. Now the 2 boys were definitely ready to be baptized and so was their mother, however the mother currently has to get a divorce to marry her boyfriend so they couldn't be married right now. Which I think is a good thing. I'll explain that in a little bit but the baptisms on Saturday went great. Ivan wanted me to baptize and confirm him so I had the honor to do that and it was awesome. So in sacrament meeting at the confirmation the whole family came, even the boyfriend and the entire time the boyfriend was reading the Book of Mormon on his phone. He actually got through 4 chapters!! So I think the boyfriend is slowly progressing towards baptism and I think by the time that he is ready to be baptized it will probably be around the same time that they will be married. They both have said that they notice that the home feels a lot better and that it's brighter and that the gospel is changing their lives. It's cool to see how a whole family can change and accept the gospel. God works in mysterious ways and things work out for a reason. The boyfriend always mentions that we always have an answer to every question he asks us. I explained to the mother that the reason we have an answer is because we have the truth. We have the restored gospel. We have the Book of Mormon which contains the fullness of the gospel. We have prophets that lead and guide us in this dispensation. We have the answers right in front of us. Because we have restored truth, we have those restored answers.

So yes the boy's mother and mothers boyfriend should be baptized in May or June. How awesome. We should have a couple more baptisms at the end of the month. Our goal is 7 and we should do it. I have faith. Our AP told us that if we hit our goal he and he president will take us out to eat anywhere we want. So that's my only motivation to hit the goal. (Just kidding our motivation is to serve the lord with all our heart might mind and strength and to fulfill our purpose).

And about zone conference. We had an 8 hour zone conference yesterday. And about the Snow in March. Yes it is currently snowing right now. Ughhh.

But I love working and I love baptizing and this is the best and most fun thing I've done in my life so far. I love the church. I love this restored gospel. And I love Jesus Christ.

Love,
Elder Skabelund
   

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