Week 5- This has been one of the greatest experiences of my life

Hey Mom and Dad,

Mom you and your million questions will never change I guess. I'm laughing really hard right now in the library hahahahaha! I will do my best to answer them all.

1.) I ate, yes, if I didn't eat that would be a problem

2.) I had dinner appointments everyday except two days.  Sis Ellis who is the bomb fed us three times this week and chastised the relief society saying its time for me to share the wealth and time for you sisters to step it up and feed these elders hahaha. I love her!  She has three sons who served missions and said if there is ever a time you don't have food just come over and I will feed you.

3.) I got all of your packages.  Thank you for the food and I'm figuring out what I need to get at the grocery store. I spent about thirty this week for food.  So I am getting better.

4.) Elder Tanner my zone leader gave me his bike because they have a car but the other bike I have is done so if he is nice he will let me keep it until I'm transferred but he hasn't asked for it back so until then I do not need a bike. I'm looking around for people leaving but there aren't many missionaries with bikes so it will be a rare occasion if I get one.

5.) My companion has helped me enough.  He obeys the rules exactly.  He often has to wake me up because I sleep through my alarm. We have tripled the amount of Book of Mormons handed out this week from 4 to 13 how crazy is that and then to put the icing on the cake we doubled our lessons from 10 to 21 this week. And We have 4 new investigators. 

6.) We did the same thing for P-day. We played speed and basketball with Elder Wood who is really good and plays at SVU.   I helped a missionary clean out his car for zone conference coming up this Thursday. We didn't get to the gym until 1:30 and only had two hours to play. But it was fun. I ate at subway with everyone and used my companions gift card because his mom sent him a bunch. If you send me gift cards or if other people send me gift cards, send me Wendy's, Dairy Queen, Subway, Red robin and maybe like 20 bucks in cash so if we decide to go to a local restaurant then I will have cash.

7.)That is awesome that Madisons friend is coming to this mission. 

8.) No it hasn't rained for like a week but the weather is starting to go up and down but nothing extreme. I dont need winter stuff quite yet give it another month.

9.) So our investigator Kelli is no longer progressing as an investigator. She is still struggling with her addictions.  Like Dad said in his email it might be a long process especially since she has completely changed her life around. She has gone from 2 packs a day to two cigs a day which is a big change but we challenged her to 0.  We told her the blessing that will come and that heavenly father will help her. We told her to pray often because she is not doing that enough. Hopefully she will keep commitments and follow through but we are slowly helping her and it may take a while. Other than that we had a really good week as far as new investigators go and the ward told us that they haven't had a good set of elders for a long time since the old Elder Brown who also was from Pennsylvania was here.   They said there is something about Elder Browns hahaha! 

10.) So it was fast sunday. I started my fast and we brought two investigators to church with us Nate and Steffen. I felt prompted to bare my testimony. I shared two blessings that happened during the week about the rain storm and the lightning storm. I think I already told you about the rainstorm one. Where I prayed the rain would stop and a lady came by and gave us this free umbrella. but this week it was 8:40 near the end of the day and a huge lightning storm hit Arvada.  We could see dark clouds coming from all sides of us but we continued to tract.  I was freaking out because Colorado has the highest rate of people getting struck in the US. But my companion kept saying we would be fine. I told him we need to go home now this lighting is too much and there were streaks flashing in the sky right by us every 5 seconds. We street contacted this dude who was smoking a cig on the side of the street he wanted to walk and talk with us and he was probably high,  because the lighting didn't seem to bother him at all. So as we are walking I'm flinching every time lighting strikes.   But within a minute I looked up into the air while my companion was talking and this cloud of blue sky was right over us and the miracle was it continued over our heads as we were walking. We weren't walking in a straight line either. We were walking left and right,  up and down the blocks while we talked to this guy who took our book of Mormon copy and said he will read it because he has interests in religions. It bore testimony that night that the Lord is watching over his missionaries as they are doing his work and I know as the eye of the storm was following us it was god protecting us as we continued to do his work. I shared those two stories in my testimony and concluded by bearing my testimony about the gospel of Jesus Christ. It was so cool and I was calm and looked out into the audience extremely confident. 

I Love you so much and I wish you were here to see me. This has been one of the greatest experiences of my life and guess what,  I'm only two weeks in!! But I know there will be plenty more to come possible leadership positions and training opportunities along side with trials. Please stay safe.  I pray nothing will happen to our family while I'm gone. Please bare testimony of the power of the spirit and how it directs the path of peoples choices. I was riding my bike in the night and I thought I heard somebody yell Yo from this house. I ignored it because my companion didn't hear anything and we kept riding into the night. About half a mile later the spirit whispered to me go back now! I stopped my companion and I told him we need to go back and its already 9:00 at night. We head back and This guy named Steffan  said come please I want to talk. This man is in an assisted living home and got into an accident a long time ago but can hold conversations and can remember things if we repeat it to him more than once. He came to church the next day and after texted us that night that his  life has completely changed.  He said he knows this is what he wants and needed. Now he needs to keep exploring. He thanked me for my testimony and said when is the next time we can meet.  If I didn't listen to the spirit then his life along with his friend Nate's wouldn't have changed and we would have missed a golden opportunity.

I love you Mom and Dad thanks for the advice it helps me so much! I love you so much I miss you Tell the girls hi for me and tell me more about BYU!   Tanner M I thought was going to start.  Thats cool. I love you so much bye!!

I ran into some of my friends from the MTC at a meeting.

Me so tired!