A Really Great Week

Hey everyone!!

Well I am sure you guys will all be enjoying a white Christmas, but here it is HOT. We still got the Christmas spirit going though as we bought a small tree for the house haha. Also, the four of us Elders who live together bought Rubix cubes because we can all solve them. Haha we're all a bunch of nerds. Anyways, it was a really great past week! To start, we had a lesson with [...] on Tuesday and afterwards he took us out and bought us some food- that was super nice and he was really insisting! And just the other day, he had his baptismal interview with our district leader Elder Rosenhan, and.....passed!! Woooooooh!! So we each are going to have our first baptism this Saturday! We are both super excited, as is [...].

Sunrise in Flores

Elder Good hit his 6 month mark this week and so we went out to get ice cream. It was awesome, and I am so grateful they have really good ice cream here because I loooooove ice cream haha. 

Elder Good

We had a great day on Thursday. We got a lesson that morning with someone we contacted on the street named [...]. Her son isn't interested and she is very catholic but she enjoyed our message and wants us to come back another day. We also had a lesson with a less active named [...], and we were hoping to get the lesson to be with her husband too, but he hadn't gotten back from work yet. So we had a lesson anyways and it was really awesome! And even better, her husband [...] got back from work near the end of our lesson and sat in. He is really nice and afterwards he said he had to go back out again so he could take us where we needed to go. So he drove us to our house and we got ready to go to a mutual activity that we were invited to. We got there like ten minutes late and only one person was there. So we waited a couple minutes and all of the sudden someone in the ward named [...] (who just got off off a mission) pulled up in a van and like a dozen jovenes piled out. Four of them were non members and two were less actives. We played soccer in the gym for like two hours (we had to leave after two hours, but they were still playing haha) and it was super fun. And we even set up a lesson with one of them this weekend, so we are hoping to get to know some of the others better if they keep coming to activities!

We had stake conference this weekend and we heard from President Olsen, some local authorities, and members of the stake presidency. Also, our investigators came both to the adult session on Saturday and to the conference on Sunday!! 

Flores Cathedral

I read JSH 1:1-35 in my personal study this morning and the spirit bore witness unto me again about the truthfulness of that history. And we talked a lot about the restoration in our zone conference today. We also watched a video about Joseph Smith and the first vision which I have seen a few times but I can always feel the spirit when that first vision music starts and watch the experience. The spirit is clearly a witness unto me of the truthfulness of the BOM and Joseph Smith, but even more is that so many people went through so much just to disprove a boy who they thought was crazy anyways. Satan worked hard. I also think of the scripture that basically says if we build our foundation on Christ we cannot and will not fall even if the mouth of hell gapes open after us. 

I love being a missionary. It sure is hard work, but we really do see miracles and I am so grateful to be able to feel the spirit so often. Although I have read them before, a few vesus really stuck out to me in my studies this week- Moroni 7:45-48. They speak of charity and as I read them slowly and thought about them, they taught me a lot. Amazing verses. 

Anyways, happy holidays to everyone, and I love you all!!

Elder Layton