Season 15 Episode 5

This was a really good week. Sorry no new pics, but I will work on that. Last week we played soccer  and it was a blast. It was so much fun. This week was a pretty open day. We worked really hard to find somebody. We did! We found this guy named Forrest. He is straight from Texas and he loves the Lord. He said we could come back and we tried another approach of inviting him to the Ward party. It is a little country ho-down. That has been a huge aspect of finding for us recently.

Since everything was crazy today, I’m just gonna hit the highlights. We had a meeting in Vancouver. It was a really good meeting. They usually are and this one just helped us see more of what we can do. I had a couple lessons this week with Brandon and we taught him some of the commandments. We talked about chastity first and then we went to tithing. When we got there to teach tithing he said, “Elder's, I cheated. I read the pamphlet before you came.” He recently just found out how to use the Gospel Library app. It was awesome!  So we had him teach us tithing.

I went on exchanges and we did some service in the morning. And spring here in the Northwest could either be 60° and sunny or it can be 40° and pouring down rain. This time it was pouring down rain and the service got canceled. But that day we felt like we needed to find a priesthood holder. We went and looked for a guy who we thought could be a potential leader in the ward. The place we felt like we needed to go was in an extremely wealthy neighborhood. But we worked hard we didn't quite find him. But we will if we still work hard.

That's about it.  Sorry for such a short email but things are going really well.

Love,
Elder Astle

Season 15 Episode 4

This last week was crazy. We did a sort of zone minute to win it. But it took forever to set up. So that is why the emails were so bad last week. This week we went to an indoor soccer place and man, that was fun! I am stinking tired though, but it was worth it.

Monday we had a quick stop by to Brandon's house. We have been keeping in contact with him daily to help him progress. It is interesting because we have done everything we can to help him stay active in the future. We introduced him to family history, we have his fellowshipper in the bishopric. We did a bunch of things this week to help him be active in like 5 years.

Tuesday was a great day. I got to do one of my favorite things ever - I gave a baptism interview. This was the first time it hasn't been for somebody who is either 9 years old or a teenager. It was sweet. I could tell she was really converted. We were also able to teach a part member family this week and he seemed pretty interested.

While we were at the church talking about how to work with members more we met a member who has been sharing the gospel.  We were able to get a member referral. It was sweet.

Later this week we took Brandon to the temple visitor center and it was really awesome. Brandon just does everything we invite him to do and he does even more on the side. It was sunny at the temple. That is the biggest miracle of all. Brandon is now on day eight or so non-smoking! He's such a cool dude. The first time I met him I felt like I knew him from somewhere and I know why, because I was supposed to find him.

I had a really really good Easter. Everyone and their dog was at church. We had Brandon at church and investigator named Luke at church. There were also a couple other members who haven’t come to church for 20+ years. So you can say we were really busy that day trying to talk to everyone. And there was probably a ton of people who we didn't even know who came to church on Easter.

Is was a good week. I read about the Savior’s life leading up to Easter. I read what would have happened on the day back then. And it was pretty cool to get to Sunday and read all the suffering and then - boom the resurrection! It was a message of peace and hope. It was awesome.

Love Elder Astle

Season 15 Episode 3

We had a really good week. It was really insane, but good. This could be called the week of meetings. We had a really good zone conference and I learned a bunch there. We also did a bunch of reports this week and because the technology was messed up we spent a good amount of time on making the correct graph. 

We did have some really good miracles this week. We've been teaching Brandon.  You can tell if somebody is repenting by the way they look and by the way they feel. The last lesson we had with him we committed him to repent to let go of everything that was holding him back. It was a great lesson and we had a really good talk about the word of wisdom and how that will bless his life. 

We had interviews with President this week. Those are always great. He is a really good guy. We went out to lunch with him and at the restaurant we felt like we needed to talk to this guy who happened to be Hispanic. Luckily for us Elder Bleazard knows Spanish. Turns out he was a member and has been going through a lot recently and has had some bad experiences in the past with some missionaries.  We followed the prompting. 

On Saturday I was on exchanges. We had a really good day. Things just didn't go the way we planned. We had a pretty cool miracle right as we are about to walk into dinner. We talked to this guy in his car and he said he was just visiting with his friend. We taught him about the restoration in the Book of Mormon and he said that he would be willing to give it a try. And then he said that he was eating dinner with the missionaries in the house that we were going to. We had dinner with him and the member and her son who was one of the people we talked to outside who happened to be a member as well. And we still had a good conversation at dinner about the gospel and what we do and it was really cool. 

The biggest miracle of all came on Sunday. It was fast Sunday and we were planning on teaching Brandon how to fast so he can help overcome his smoking addiction. But things fell through and we weren't able to teach him before. We had a few members of the ward fast for Brandon that he wouldn't have the desire to smoke anymore. And after church we went over to his house and we asked him how his progress was going and he told us that he didn't even have a desire to smoke today! Fasting works! It was the best thing ever. That was definitely the highlight of the week. 

I am doing good it is a short letter today but I had a lot of things going on. 

Elder Astle 

Sent by a nice member in his ward

Season 15 Episode 2

This was fantastic week. Man it was busy as ever. But it was a very satisfying enjoyable week. I am in Ridgefield, Washington. If you have ever heard of that I would be surprised, because it is tiny. It is a big farming area.  It is a little farming town but it is sweet. 

Monday was great Pday we had to cut it off early because we had a lesson with some less actives. They fed us a feast. It was awesome! Right after that we headed over to Brandon's house. Brandon is a single dad with a seven year old son named Mason. We taught him the plan of salvation and when we invited him to be baptized he had tears coming down his face. It was sweet. He said he didn't feel ready to be baptized. Funny thing about Brandon is that the very first time I met him he looked familiar. I know I was supposed to find him. We had a bunch of teaching in the evening. We then headed over to a members house. They invited a friend to take the lessons. We taught the restoration and it seemed to go pretty well. That was a sweet miracle teaching in a members home!

Tuesday was a normal day but  later that day just seemed that we were in the right place at the right time. We stopped by a few less active who weren't home, but the Lord was putting us in the place where we needed to be. It was sweet. 

Wednesday we had a zone meeting and it seemed to go really well. When it goes smoothly it make life easier. After that we had an exchange. I stayed in Pioneer and we had a very busy night. We went to teach a less active member and we taught her boyfriend as well. He seemed pretty interested so that was a good start to the lessons. After that we headed across the area for another appointment and shortly after that appointment we had another appointment. This one was with Brandon. We took him to the family history center at the church to work on his family history. He absolutely loved it. He started punching in his family that he knew and then all of a sudden he found somebody that had a lot of work done and he could trace his line back to the 1000's. What a great resource that was for us!

Thursday was pretty normal.  Nothing too out of the blue happened. We see miracles every single day. It is sweet that the Lord is blessing us in our time here in this area.

Friday we had another lesson with Brandon and he committed to a baptismal date!!! He committed to April 29 to be baptized!!! Woo hoo!!

Saturday we watched the first session of conference with Brandon. It was a really good session. We watched the second session at our ward mission leader's house because all of our other plans fell through. It was a great conference and we learned a ton. Funny thing about conference is that Brandon was talking to us later and we only were going to watch one conference with him but he actually ended up watching all of them. It was awesome!!! He told us later.  He was quoting the statistics and we thought, “Wait, you watched the second session?” It was just funny. 

Sunday was great as well. We watched another session with Brandon and it happened to be the one where the speaker talked to the nonmembers. So how cool is that!! Brandon leaned in and was attentive and now every time we teach, bring him to church, or invite him to do anything he always has that look in the eyes that the gospel is changing him! 

Peace! ️ ✌

Elder Astle