Swamped

Dear Family and Friends,

Truth is, all this responsibility is really wearing me out. I am super
sorry that my last few emails haven't been very detailed, I will try
to make up for that with this one.

These last few weeks have been packed. I'll probably just tell you all
about this week and hope that it covers some of the things I haven't
in the past few weeks.

First off, Mitchell Gold is still going strong! We met with him again
this week and discussed the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Mitchell is
probably one of the most humble men I have ever met in my life and is
so willing to restart. I think the lessons we have with him are some
of the most spiritual I have had my whole mission. He always talks
about the strong presence of the spirit during our lessons. What a
gift being a missionary is.

In these last few weeks, we had our last lesson with Clint, Audrey,
Martha, Sarah, and the children. We taught them about laws and
ordinances last week, which is the last of the organized discussions
we have. They understood this, so they invited us to come back again
this last Monday to have a barbecue. We went back and had a wonderful
time, talking, eating, holding one of the older children's (Katie) pet
hawk. We do not think they will invite us up for any more lessons but
they said that they wanted to do a barbecue thing again sometime! This
makes me a little sad because I have grown to love this family and
want so very dearly to help them more but they are not ready at this
time. Sometimes the most we can do is pray.

Randy Walker is an amazing man, God is working many mighty miracles in
his life. He is the one who we found by helping them move in. He has a
very good understanding of the doctrine and helps us teach his
children. Randy is now reading the Book or Mormon with his family, and
even really wanted some copies of the children's Book of Mormon with
pictures for his kids. For some reason they are having a hard time
making the commitment to come to church, but we have high hopes for
them in the future if they keep working this hard.

Michael is a young man we met one time while doing some inspired
tracting a long time ago. We tried to meet with him for a long time
but he never kept his appointments. A while ago we were feeling like
he wasn't interested, so we prayed about it and decided to drop him if
he didn't answer the door. When we knocked he came right out and
greeted is kindly. We were able to teach him the Plan of Salvation,
because he has a newborn, and he understood and received everything
very well. This week we taught him the Restoration lesson, it was
incredible. He kept mentioning how it all made sense. His only concern
with everything we had taught so far was the "three heavens" that he
had heard about. We felt inspired to ask him what he thought hell was.
He told us that hell was wanting something, being able to see it, and
never being able to get there. What a perfect description! We told him
that's exactly what hell was and read from some scriptures in the
Book of Mormon that taught us that same concept. We also read from 1
Corinthians 15 which teaches us about the three degrees of glory. It
was an amazing lesson!

We just started meeting with Fred and Cara Jessop! Fred is related to
Will and Kara because he is Will's brother, and Cara is related to
Andy and Michelle because she is Michelle's sister (it's all good if
you don't remember all these people, there are a lot of them.) It is
so much fun to teach people from the same family! Fred and Cara are
just ready to be taught and willing to learn. We taught the
Restoration and it was a loooooooong lesson, but they just wanted to
know more and more! It was cool.

Will and Kara, and Amy Weidow all had their interview with a general
authority this week! I haven't been able to hear about it yet but I
can't wait! We saw them at church on Sunday and they all looked
absolutely radiant.

One more miracle from this week: The first day Elder Peterson was
here, we were walking down a street and a young woman road up to a
house on a longboard. By all appearances, she did not look like
someone that would ever accept the gospel, however the spirit
constrained us that we should speak. Her name is Alexis, she goes by
Alex, and she was so kind, yet she did not seem that interested. This
last week we felt a prompting to send her a text and ask how she had
been. She texted back and told us she hadn't been well and really
wanted to come to church because it would help her. As a missionary
you sometimes worry that things are too good to be true, but they
weren't in this case! Alexis was at church! She found a ride and came.
We were helping pass the sacrament, so we couldn't sit by her right
away, but she found a member she knew to sit with. After the
sacrament, we were about to go sit by them when an elderly lady
noticed her, stood up, came back to where she was, bent over the other
member to give her a hug and then sat by her. Wow, this is a cool
ward. The rest of the day, member after member introduced themselves
and welcomed her to the ward. By the end, when they would invite her
back, she would say, "oh, I'll definitely be back." We pulled her
aside right in the middle of it and learned a lot about her. It wasn't
easy for her to get to church that day, the devil was working on her
in every way possible, but she made it and she is being blessed for
it.

I love this work, there is nothing better than this work out there. I
love these people. I love my savior and the fact that he made it
possible to change and grow. I love my Heavenly Father and how he
guides us through he Holy Ghost. I never want to stop doing what I'm
doing. Y'all will probably have to kidnap me to get me back home.
Seriously.

Love,
Elder Thomas

Holding Katie's hawk!

This darn chicken wouldn't leave our yard.

Holding a bed... ?