Teaching!

Sister Smiley at the Humanitarian Center

Hi Everyone! Sister Wilson and I have had a great week here on Temple Square. The best part of my week was teaching Duane over the phone. Duane called in a few weeks ago to find out about church because his finace is a member of the church and he wanted to know where the church would be for her. So I spoke to him about church and asked him if he wanted to learn more about his fiance's beliefs and he said that would be great. He is very familiar with the Bible and a wonderful Christian that is truely seeking to follow the example of Jesus Christ. So last week Sister Wilson and I set up a time to call him and we taught him about the great apostasy. We found out that he already has a testimony of the great apostasy--he was in complete agreeance with what we were teaching that there were no prophets on the earth from the time of Christ. We were completely surprised; we didn't even have to teach him. So we left him with the introduction of the Book of Mormon to read. Next time we called he had read the Introdcution as well as the Testimony of the Three Witnesses and the Testimony of the Eight Witnesses as well as the Testimony of Joseph Smith--way more than we expected him to read. Not only did he read it, but he said that he believed that Joseph Smith had been called as a prophet! He said that it lines up what the Bible teaches and it follows the pattern of how God works. That was what we were planning on teaching him and it had turned out that he taught himself! So we read Moroni 10:3-5 with him and he said that he would take up the promise to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. We also gave him 2 Nephi 31 to read because it talks about following the example of Jesus Christ and that is really what he wants to do. He is amazing! Hopefully next week he can go to church and meet with the missionaries.

The weather here is finaly cooling down. The past few weeks have been quite warm and I'm glad for a break. The Square is also starting to die down as kids go back to school and people go back to work. The next big thing will be General Conference, which we are already counting down to and preparing for. Something that we're really going to try to improve on as a mission is the quality of our interactions with members. One of the things that I try to work on here is trying to make sure that members know that I'm not talking with them just because I want to call their friends, but because I want to have a good interaction with them too and try to uplift them in some way too. So I'm quite excited for this focus this coming conference.