YNG MOSES?

Fam,

What a blessing it is to be on the Lord's team doing His work, I can't even begin to tell you how many miracles he has blessed us with lately! He truly is involved in this work and He cares about each and every one of us. As Elder Willes and I (on exchanges) were in a lesson with Sebastian, it was pretty evident that the Spirit has been working with him in his life. We taught him the Restoration for the first time after he was baptized and the conversation goes as follows: "Sebastian what do you remember about Joseph Smith?" "Well he was a prophet." "How did you come to know that he was a prophet?" "Because I read the Book of Mormon and prayed about it. Through the Spirit I came to know that it was true. The Spirit doesn't just come knocking on your door though, it speaks to us through our thoughts and feelings." "....." Let me remind you that he was baptized just 2 weeks ago!

Also on exchanges with Elder Willes we set a goal to find a new investigator that day. It was 7:00 and we still hadn't found anyone and we had an appointment at 7:30 that would probably end the night for us. On the side of the road we said a prayer asking to find somebody to teach and we felt like we should go down this particular street to contact people. Down that road we ran into this lady named Christian and we explained to her that we were going around sharing a message about Jesus. Out of what seemed to be frustration, she told us to go talk to the neighborhood punks that had been throwing rocks at her house because "they need Jesus". She explained that they were around back playing basketball and was surprized when we accepted her invite. We went back and let's just say put a little fear of God in them. Don't worry though, we got their information and we're gonna go back and teach them soon! We returned and reported to Christian and she was amazed! So we set an appointment with her and the next day we went back and taught her so she is an investigator now. Solid!

This Saturday Justin was baptized and he was confirmed on Sunday. It was really cool to work with him through his conversion process and to see how prepared he was. He brought his girlfriend and his family to his baptism and his girlfriend is interested in learning more about the gospel. In a separate email I'm going to send out the story about how we found him, it's pretty cool how we ended up on his doorstep! BTW, YNG Moses is Justin's rapper name, so that's why it is the subject line haha. Also this week Katrina and Favour, both recent converts, gave out copies of the Book of Mormon this week to people who are now interested in learning more #Motivation!!!

Earlier today we were over at Justin's house and he was teaching us Jujitsu and I left my camera at his house so there will be minimal pictures this week sorry! You'll just have to wait until next week;)

Have a good week!!

-Elder Larson

Justin!

Clean up!

FINDING JUSTIN

Elder Jones (my last companion) and I were at a zone conference meeting for most of the day and afterwards we had a meeting with the stake leadership to discuss the missionary work in the zone. Afterwards we had an appointment at 8 PM with a referral from church headquarters that had ordered a Bible and a Book of Mormon. We had already been over twice and realized both times that we had neither a copy of the Bible with us or a copy of the Book of Mormon. Upon arrival at his apartment, we realized that we had neither with us AGAIN. We are the biggest scrubs!!! We made the executive decision that we weren't going to try by the appointment because A) We felt impressed not to go B) 2 days earlier we were talking to a less active about the movie Saratov Approach (where 2 missionaries go to an appointment in Russia and the forgot to bring a Book of Mormon to give the man but they ended up getting kidnapped and held for ransom) and we were in a pretty sketchy neighborhood C) we were super embarrassed and filled with shame....

We hadn't eaten anything since around 12 and we were both feeling Chic-Fil-A so we decided to make a stop at the on fairly close to our apartment. While I was ordering my food the kid that was taking my order, Jaylon, asked me if I was a Mormon. I told him that I was and out of curiosity he began to ask a few questions like: "What is the difference between Mormons and everyone else?" and that sort of thing. Before I could answer, another worker there began to answer his questions and explained that his mom was actually a Mormon. His name was Chris. I gave Jaylon a card with our number on it and told him to call us if he has any other questions and then I went to sit down and eat. As I was eating, I felt impressed by the Spirit that I needed to go get Chris' information. So I went up and ordered something else and asked Chris what his mom's name was and got his phone number etc... While I was talking to him, Jaylon jumped in the conversation and told me to right down his phone number too. Sweet!

When we got home that night we looked Chris' mom up and sure enough she was a member but she hadn't been to church in a long time. The next week we were planning on doing a ward rescue effort in the Chesapeake Ward where all the missionaries in the stake would be assigned to a specific route to go contact those who hadn't been to church in a while and to invite them back to church. We figured that would be a good time to go meet with Chris and his mom so we made a request to our Bishop (who was in charge of everything) that we would get the route that included Chris' mom in it. We also wanted to start working in that specific area more too.

Fast forward to the day of the rescue effort, unfortunately, we weren't able to catch Chris or his mom at a good time and they weren't home. As a part of the rescue effort we were trying to find out if a lot of these people were still living at the address that they had on the roster, so any information that we could get about the people was valuable.We were at another one of the members houses that was on our assigned route but they didn't answer either so we felt like we should try by their neighbor to see if they knew anything about them. We knocked and a young man with an afro named Justin answered the door. Instinctively I asked: "Do you play ball man?" "Nahhh I do martial arts. But you guys can come back to share that message with me sometime." Two months later Justin is baptized and has shared the gospel with pretty much everyone that he spends time with and several of his cousins, brothers and his girlfriend want to start meeting with the missionaries now. The Lord works in mysterious ways but His ways will always work out!