Monday, January 2, 2012

Hey Family!

This week was really good! I’m glad that everyone had a good week! New Years was pretty good for us...just the usual though, to bed by 10.30.

It’s crazy that it is already 2012! Way cool. haha It’s year of the plane! That’s what they say here when you go home that year. Kind of funny.

This week was good! We only had one investigator that went to church this week. It was Magdalena. We also talked with her about baptism more and she wants to get baptized, but we have to help her to quit smoking first. So that’s our big job for this week and next! I’m way excited for her! She really loves going to church and going to the activities too! She loves it when we go to her house! She told us that she just feels like her house illuminates when we are there haha. Her whole family is really cool but they haven’t come to church with her yet. We’re going to work on that too!

This week I had a really spiritual experience that I would like to share. On Tuesday we had an appointment at 7 with one of our investigators. We had planned the night before about what we were going to share with him and what we wanted to happen from the visit. But as we were walking to the appointment we were going over our plans for the lesson. I got a really strong feeling that we needed to change them and talk about something different. I knew that we needed to talk about a message that was in the Liahona, the Liahona all about the Book of Mormon. We had given him one a few days earlier and invited him to read it. When we got to the lesson, we began to verify all the things that we had committed him to do since our last visit. He explained to us that he had almost read the entire Liahona, and only had like two pages left. Then I asked him if there was anything that stood out to him. He told us that there was that it was a scripture that came in a message and he started to look for the page it was on but couldn’t find it. I asked him what it was about and he just said "a promise" and that’s when I knew exactly what message he was talking about. I helped him turn to it and it was exactly the message that I felt like we should talk about with him. It was the message from President Monson about the precious promises of the Book of Mormon, and the scripture was Moroni 10:4-5.

4 And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

5 And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.

He then told us that he had prayed and asked to know if the Book of Mormon is true and that he knows it is true. It was a very special experience and it made a big impact on me and my companion. It was really awesome to see the hand of the Lord preparing us and guiding us so that we were ready for exactly what His child needed. It’s an experience that I will never forget!

We have a lot of work ahead of us this week! We need to find some more investigators this week! We made it a goal to have more investigators at church this Sunday so we’re going to be working super hard!

Well I hope that everyone has a great week! I miss you all and love you all a lot!

Love Elder Jake Hatch