The Master is Calling! : The Breaking of the Trioship

Dear Family and Friends,

Elder Chamberlain (or as I now call him, "champ") has left us and gone to accomplish his big life plans. We miss him a ton, but we continue to work hard and help this area to keep growing! However, he didn't leave till Saturday, so he was here for most of the week!

One of the highlights of this week was getting to teach Carl! Carl has been taught and trained in all the ways of anti-Mormonism bashing, but is willing to discuss and learn more. When we first encountered him, he had kind of a feel of a bible-basher, but the spirit prompted us to give him a try. It ended up being one of the funnest lessons I have taught the whole mission. One prompting we received before the lesson was that he would know more bible verses, but that we knew more about the Holy Ghost. So as we taught and he brought up scripture after scripture to prove us wrong, we had scriptures to counter each point but the spirit told us not to share them, save a few, but rather to listen and testify. When the lesson started, he was in an immovable position, seeking only to convert us to his view. When the lesson ended he had agreed to read the Book of Mormon and to pray before reading it and after reading it. It was incredible. We do not know if he will choose to be baptized as a result, but we know he has come closer to Christ by being willing to act in faith.

The next day while spending some time on the Native American reservation in Pryor, we got to help the local Christian church set up a huge circus tent for a big Christian revival they were going to be having that week. It was super fun, and super hard. We kinda felt like we were setting up the entire tent by ourselves because when we showed up most of everyone stopped working and just watched us... which was a little weird but they all helped us with the final and hardest part. Highlight of the night was hearing all the white people jokes from the little kids haha.

We found an amazing young woman this week when we followed the spirit to an apartment. She was willing to listen and hadn't heard a whole ton about the LDS religion but wanted to, and she was willing to have the missionaries stop by. Sadly she doesn't live in our area and was just visiting, but we pray it will all work out for her.

Splits this week were amazing and we found new people to teach! I got to talk to Patrick Shorter, a remarkably good man, father of 2 and married to an inactive member of the church who was willing to hear more, and actually came to church! Elder Emms also got to talk to Tammy which I was pretty jealous of. Even she doesn't know where her daughter is now, but apparently her daughter is doing well.

A lot of the week was spent taking Elder Chamberlain around and getting him ready to leave. This was very bittersweet for him, and just bitter for us. On Saturday we dropped him off and it was rough! We are going to miss him a ton. We are still complaining about him being gone.

Speaking of Elder Chamberlain being gone... So Elder Chamberlain is gone which is super sad, but also part of my story. So the day after we took him to the airport was Sunday and Elder Emms and I were supposed to speak in Sacrament Meeting. The meeting is at 8:30 so we usually head there right after we get ready. Well, I sleep with earplugs and Elder Emms apparently can't wake to alarms... so 8:20 rolls around haha and Elder Emms is frantically tapping on my feet saying something, so I pull my earplugs out and here, "Elder, it's 8:20!!!" Oooooh my gosh. We threw our clothes on and rinsed off a little and ran to church, we were only a few minutes late, but it was SO embarrassing and everyone was laughing at us. AND everyone kept pointing out my scruff cause i totally didn't have time to shave either! It was crazy, we miss Elder Chamberlain!

It was an amazing day. We finished the day providing service for Sister Beadling and being dangerous. (Sorry mom!)

Love you all!

Love,
Elder Thomas

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