Members Invite Not the Missionaries

MI FAMILIA!!!!!!!!

 

What is up??? All of you just make me so happy and i can see through the emails the spirit that you each carry with you! I love that about my amazing wonderful family! I love you all! Keep up the good work and being strong in all that you do!

 

Miles looks as if he is growing and looking more and more like his uncle :) I love the lil mohawk he's got going on haha what a stud!! I'm glad to hear though that he is healthy and doing well... paige, quite the crying i'll be home in a week. LITERALLY thats how it feels. The mission is flying by. I can't believe nick and jake brown are going home in like 3 or 4 months. Thats crazy to me because i remember saying bye to both of them. I am super amazed though to see all that each one of my cousins and friends are accomplishing in their missions! It's the best! I think of my mission and how great it is, then i look at the big picture and think of all 80,000 missionaries and how they feel the same about their missions. They as well see the same success and happiness in the work. I love that about missionary work! It's awesome!

 

This past week here in FLO RIDA was a lot lot better:) We got to go get some work done!!! And god HIMSELF was a big part of it:) Elder Millett is now feeling better. He got done taking all his medication and now he is all the way their (if ya know what i mean) hahaha He's doing good though and feeling a lot better. This past week has been the happiest i have ever seen him i think. SO... he must be feeling better. The happiness and love that we had was contagious! You could see the diference it made in the work. We found, taught and helped souls repent by coming to church. This past week elder millett and i (and god) were able to get 8 people to church! What maravillosa verdad!! It was so cool. One of our big focuses were working with the members. The District Training which i gave was all about preparing members before lessons. Helping them to understand their purpose in the lesson and also the commitment in which we wanted the MEMBER to leave with them. That was the objective of the training. MEMBERS INVITE NOT THE MISSIONARIES. It was amazing to see as we applied that throughout our week god blessed us. We had one lesson for example with a guy named kenneth. Kenneth is kinda a gangsta so we decided to have one of our recent converts Derek (whom is black with grills hahaha) come with us. That way derek could be a lil thug with him but at the same time share short sweet powerful testimony. So before the lesson i was telling derek. Aight man listen up we need you in this lesson. Kenneth needs you. God needs you. We then complimented him for always reading his scriptures and going to church. Then we talked to him about church and how he liked church. How he feels there, etc. After that we said okay Derek we want you at the end of this lesson to invite Kenneth to come to church on sunday and sit with you. Will you do that?? he looked at us with a ( i pooped my pants ) kind of look. haha sorry for the description but it's the truth! He was scared to death and he said, "come on man i cant do that. You can't put that on me man. I can't vibe like that." hahah we then used doctrine to help him understand the importance of him inviting. Eventually he said okay i got it. I'm pumped. yeah lets go i'm ready. SO WE WENT!! That lesson we were teaching repentance and the importance of the atonement of christ. So at that end of that our plans were to explain to him he can show his desire to repent to god as he came to church the next day. THEN after that derek would invite him to church. WELL.... It didn't quite go like planned. After we got done talking about repentance i said. "So kenneth will you pray and ask god for a forgiveness of your past sins tonight?" Before Kenneth could even anwser DEREK jumped in and said "also my man we wanna invite ya to church this sunday. will ya come?" hahahha oh man so there was kenneth with 2 commitments running in his brain haha it was great!!!! BUT guess what HE CAME TO CHURCH!!!!! The invite from the member was all he needed haha he may or may not have ignored the commitment i tried leaving with him but it didn't matter because he focused and was paying attention to the one the MEMBER left with him. It was amazing to see the influence and difference that a member has in a lesson!! WE NEED THEM IN THIS WORK!

 

We were so so blessed this past week. God is good! He's the best!!! Also big new guess what???? ELDER OAKS is coming to our mission!!!!! :) He is coming OCT 19th. What are the odds right? Went to blakes and now to mine! haha i'm super excited though. I'm even more excited for conference this weekend. I encourage each of you to take notes and to do it how Elder Bednar taught us in the MTC back in the day when i was there :( sad day haha that was a long time ago. But.... In each conference talk look for the Doctrine that the speaker is trying to teach us. Then looked for the promised blessings that they talk about and last but not least look for the Invitations that are offered to us! I have done this as i've watched conference the past 2 times and wow i get so so much out of it! I love you all and may god be with you this upcoming week! Let me know if you need anything!

 

ELDER OVARD