Not By Our Doing

This week I can't help but starting out by announcing this. We got a BCD! If we look that up in the Mormonese to English dictionary, making sure to use the Missionary Dialect we will see that BCD means.... someone's getting baptized. Baptism and Confirmation Date is what that actually stands for and we made sure as of Thursday that our youngest investigator, Morgan, who is a senior in high school, got one of those hehe. If all goes well she will be baptized on September 14th. We are doing our best to support her and keep in close contact because she moves around between school and her parents' houses a lot. But she has a strong desire to be baptized and I know she can make it.

Me and Sister Bennion teach a wide variety of people. It's pretty crazy. There's youngsters like Morgan, old ladies who have been the same religion for 80 years (they don't progress much, but I think they like having the girls over), Southern Baptists looking for a debate, people who let us in because they want to Jehovah's Witness bash and then they figure out that we are Mormon and awkwardly have to let us talk, and then there's like 300 less active members in this ward and they expect us to track down all of them. :O My favorite thing to do is teach progessing investigators though. They are generally more friendly to the Church than less-actives even.

Oh gosh, how could I forget to highlight the biggest adventure of the week. Sister Bennion and I took a wrong turn in the backwoods and ended up stuck in the bug infested Florida sand-dirt for three hours!! A ward member had to tow us out when the Elders couldn't even though they drive a truck. We definitely learned a lesson about using our best judgment there. :P

Okay, highlight of the week. I even got to tell this story to the Fort Walton Stake President who I met yesterday at ward conference. We are teaching this guy David who is definitely one of those people who comes to the lesson ready to debate and negate. He said upfront that the heart is treacherous and he feels no emotion. He owns like 10 versions of the Bible and I kid you not, his hobby is to bring over representatives of different religions and debate with them. So naturally I was hesistant to go over to his house twice this week. The first time went alright. He said at the end, in regard to the Book of Mormon, "I can't reject this completely" which I thought was a big step. Next visit I'm still really hesitant and Sister Bennion starts saying how she wants me to get involved with the lesson more. So yeah we get to this lesson and he's debating everything and then he's debating about the Spirit of God and he says that it's treacherous to feel anything, but then out of nowhere he started tearing up and talking about how he knows the Spirit is real and he can feel it when he reads the scriptures. It's not an emotion, he said, (so I guess it isn't so treacherous haha), but he knows it can help him learn the truth and he agreed to read The Book of Mormon. :) So, we'll see where this goes.

Not by our doing, my friends. It's the Spirit! :D That's what softens people and makes them want to learn more, come to church, and get BCDs. It's really the best missionary in the world.

Love you, everyone!

Till next week,

Sister Laura Cooper

The gorgeous DeFuniak Sunset