The Importance of a Testimony

Hello Family!!!

So good to hear from you guys! Things are still going really well for us here! The young man we've been teaching is getting baptized this week on Saturday the 23rd actually instead of the 24th, so that is going to be sweet! Our other investigator, however will not be getting baptized... this week, she no longer has a date set, but I will talk about that later. So we had a good meeting with our baptism candidate yesterday, we went over kind of some of the logistics of the service and things like that, and he is ready to go! We did have kind of a speed bump with his mom last night, but we got everything smoothed out, and his dad told us that some of their family is coming into town for the baptism, but they will only be here on Saturday, so we are going to see if we can do the confirmation on Saturday as well!! (His family are not members just FYI) So that is going to be pretty sweet!

As for the young lady we've been teaching, she is still doing good, and we will be meeting with her tomorrow, she kind of realized that she wasn't ready to be baptized this week, but the reason she wasn't ready was because she hadn't been doing some of the things that we had been asking her to do. So we are going to try again to set a goal for her to be baptized, and I will let you know how that goes next week!

We also went to the home of the couple we've been teaching again yesterday, it went really well, she is still asking us all sorts of questions, and I think that she is starting to realize that her beliefs are very similar to ours (if not the same). I feel like she is overlooking what matters most, yes it is good to know the doctrine of the church, but I still don't even understand all of the minute details of the gospel. What is important though, is that I have a testimony that the Book of Mormon is true, and that Joseph Smith was called as a prophet and to restore the gospel, as long as I know that, the rest will come with time. I just wish we could get that across to her.

We had another cool experience yesterday as well, Elder Kennedy and I were checking on a less-active member, and we decided that we would go try and talk to a lady that we saw walk into her house, it turns out that they had met with the missionaries from this ward only about 5 or 6 months ago, and that the only reason they stopped is because they moved and lost contact! They have a 13 month old baby, and he teaches Physics at a private college, we didn't get to talk to them for too long, but we are going back next week, so ask me about it then!

Well, I think this might be the longest email I have sent so far on my mission! haha! I hope that you guys have a great week, and it was good to hear from you! Love you!

- Elder Schaap

P.S. Sorry, don't have my camera with me, I will send pics next week though!