January 24, 2011

Hey again!

Really encouraging week this week. We had a baptism on Saturday- we were able to baptize Robert, he's thirty and really just a solid person. We found him in the former investigators tab in the area book and felt inspired to give him a call. We started teaching him again and I'm not sure what was different this time but he accepted everything. He really had a great testimony of the Book of Mormon- ge says that everytime he reads it he feels great and good things happen in his life. I dont think I have ever had an investigator understand the Book of Mormon as well as him. He also puts everything he learns into practice. For example, last sunday the Elders Quorum lesson was on fasting. The next day he decided to fast for the first time in his life. He was praying so that he would understand the Book of Mormon better and that things would go well with his job. So until about 4 pm he was just in his office reading and praying when he had the sudden impression to go back over and order form he had recently filled out. When he did, he realized he had made an error that would have put him 600 dollars (a TON of money for an African, especially in Togo) in debt. But he caught it just in time to rectify it before it got sent. Yeah, he's really awesome and already has a huge testimony.

We have a lot of other investigators that are progressing well too. Sunday we had eight more inv. at church which was really good. Amoung them was a family of three that we want to baptize this saturday but we are just not really sure that they are ready. I think selfishly we might want to push them to baptism but the Spirit is telling us to wait a little longer. We will see how we feel about them during the week.

Another cool thing that we were able to do was like a little service project. I guess it is because we are white, but EVERYTIME we try to help people with manual labor, they all get really embarrassed and refuse. But the other day, we saw one of our investigators building a concrete brick house so we offered to help. He refused but a few days later he gave us a call and asked if we could help him with something. So we went over to his house and he asked if we were serious about working. We said of course so he gave us a couple t shirts to change into. After that we went to work on clearing his lawn of bricks and trash and stacking everything in a corner for about an hour and half. (Sounds kinda boring but it was Africanized- we were dodging giant spiders, scorpions and huge venomous millipides in the process). We could tell that he was really happy and impressed, like he was testing us by calling. The next day he even came and attended the baptism. I have high hopes for him.

Ok well I think that is it. Know that Im happy and mostly healthy. Thank you so much for your emails too! You guys dont know how much i look forward each monday to hearing from you all! Always strengthens and encourages me! Feel better Jack!

Elder Bertoch