I forgot to include a bunch of stuff in yesterdays email, same with Elder Buckley to his family so we decided to come to the library today to write another one. You might as well delete the other email i sent because i am very disappointed with the lack of effort i put into it. Please accept my apology.
We didnt do too much yesterday for p-day. There really isnt anything to do in Lawrenceville and we can't drive to South Hill or Emporia because we are limited on miles. We did our laundry at Bro. Aldersons house, worked for about 3 hours, 11am-2pm and had a lesson with 2 of our investigators. It went well, and they are seeming to understand the Book of Mormon more and more as we read it with them which is good!! One of them prayed about it after he read and he said that he is already seeing signs from praying. It was so awesome to hear that from him! Hopefully his testimony of it can grow after his experience. The other gal didnt read or pray, so we invited her to do that. We cant really move on with teaching them until they read the book that holds all of the truths of our religion.
Today we have an appointment with the gentleman we helped out in his front yard that one day. We went by his house this past week to see how he was doing and we sat in his living room and chatted for an hour and were able to meet his wife. We asked if he would be interested in learning about the gospel, but told us he had to run it by his wife first because they do everything together. He asked his wife right infront of us and gave him a "sure, why not?" We have a returning appointment with him this afternoon and we are going to teach him the restoration lesson. If the time is right, we will invite the both of them to be baptized but only if the spirit directs us to do so. After our appointment with Marshall, we are going over to a members house to help them move. I think they are moving to North Carolina??? I dont know for sure, but that will be good helping them pack up. He told us that he has been working with his neighbor to accept the missionaries into his home to take the discussions so he is going to take us over there to meet him. Hopefully we can set up a time to go meet with him!! The only problem is that they live at the very edge of our area boundary and takes us 30-40 minutes to get there which means going out there is going to eat up our miles. oh well, just as long as we get to teach someone, im okay with it!!! Thats about all that is happening for today... a member is dropping our dinner off at the church and then we are having a lesson with Woody, a recent convert, after dinner. We are going to show him "Prophet of the Restoration". I love that movie!
The biggest exciting part for the week i left out of the email yesterday!!! So a great opportunity has risen from one of the members in the branch. Her name is Starr and is really struggling with her health. She had a cochlear implant, but had to have it removed ( i dont know for what reason) but, she is waiting for some financial help to get her new hearing aids that are $9500 a piece. Until then, her 10% hearing isnt going to do her well, especially since it is gradually decreasing. I heard of all of this from the Elders Quorum president's wife, Sis. Lewis. As she was telling me about Starr, she was saying how they are studying a couple times a week trying to learn sign language so that when the time comes to when she cant hear anymore, she can resort to signing to people. I immediately offered my willingness to help them learn as far as it is approved from President Perry. I contacted Pres. Perry the following Monday to get approval and of course, he approved it. So, I am now helping Starr out along with Sis. Lewis in learning ASL. I am very rusty, so it is a great opportunity for me to relearn a lot of what i learned at Lakewood High. I might even have to interpret for her in church if her hearing gets worse before i leave the area. So please keep me in your prayers so that i will be able to learn and pick up signing again!!! I will be eternally grateful! and also, please keep Starr in your prayers. Thank you so much!
Thank you to everyone that sent me a package for Valentines!! They were awesome! the couch is full of all the treats that were inside of them! haha. I dont know how im going to be able to eat all of that stuff!
This week looks like it is going to be a full week which is good. We already have a lot of apointments set up and hopefully they dont fall through!! That is the most frustrating thing when you get a phone call saying that they have to reschedule, but that's part of the work. Just have to pick up whre you left off and move on from there. We are using a lot of the dvd videos to teach people. It is a great tool especially when you notice that they get more interested in watching something rather than listening to us teach. We try to get our investigators involved in the lesson by asking them questions and letting them talk a lot, but some of them dont want to do that. they would rather us sit there and talk the whole time which is not affective at all because we dont know if they are truly understanding what we are teaching! We are working on it though, and are definitely seeing improvement on our investigators behalf.
The Snow is already melted from Sunday night. Lame huh? Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. Sunday night was boring because we were in the apartment from 7 til we had to go to bed. Well, Thats about all the news for this past week and for the following week. I love you all, and Miss you! Take care and i look forward to hearing from you next week!!!!
Love,
Elder Baldwin
As many of you know, Elder Baldwin took American Sign Language in High School for three years. He really excelled in this and even received a Medal of Honor in Foreign Language for ASL at his Graduation. Who knew that he would be using this on his mission. The Lord works in mysterious ways and Elder Baldwin is definitely an instrument in His hands!!! We are so thankful that he has this wonderful opportunity to use this talent in helping those in need! What a blessing!!!!
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