Monday, November 19, 2012

Blessings and Spalding




Happy Thanksgiving Family!

I hope that you all enjoy dad's pumpkin pie. Elder Barajas and I bought one from the store about a month ago and it just couldn't measure up to dad's. Thank you all for praying for Charles. He was baptized on Saturday! It was wonderful. He has had such an incredible change in his life. He is 15 and now the only member in his family. His mom came to his baptism which was an amazing blessing and answers to prayer because she was the one that originally wouldn't give him permission to be baptized. The service was powerful and one to remember. Thank you for your prayers. Now the goal is to get him to temple for baptisms (after the Aaronic Priesthood) then start talking about mission preparation.

After the baptism, we took one of our investigators down into the font. He is ready to be baptized but has a fear of water. As we stood in the font (now dry) the Spirit was strong. He no longer has his fear and we are going to extend him a baptismal date for December 8th. What a blessing.

As you can see from the pictures, Spalding started early. The sister missionaries in our ward have been teaching an English class but weren't able to this past week, so we took over. They normally just teach very plain and simple vocab that everyone that attends already knew, so I decided to teach them Spalding sounds. They loved it! We only taught the vowels but they were so excited because they don't know how to spell or pronounce correctly in English. I committed each student to bring a friend the next week. We are excited to see the fruits of this. Mom, maybe Spalding is paying off after all these years. Now I am just having a hard time deciding whether or not we should play Spalding Bingo. Any input?

We had a Zone Conference this past week and it was amazing! I continue to be amazed by President and Sister Ashton and their life of dedicated service to the Lord. Last night, we had a neat experience. We were riding to go visit a person we had talked to on the street that said we could return and we were waiting at a streetlight. The thought came into my mind that we should go visit an investigator that lived nearby that didn't come to church yesterday. I mentioned it to Elder Evertsen and he suggested that we go right then rather than wait till after we tried the other person we were planning on. The investigator was not there, but his cousin was. He is a member and he welcomed us in. We found out that he hasn't been to church in two years but is only 21 so he could still serve a mission. We read in the Book of Mormon with him and we invited us to come back. We bore testimony and promised him blessings. It was powerful.

We then went to visit the man we had originally planned on visiting, as we reached the apartment complex though, we ran into another 21 year-old less active with the same story. It was incredible that we were be able to be guided by the Spirit so that we could find both of these men and bear testimony to them. The man we went to visit didn't want anything to do with us but I realized that God's purpose for us was not to visit him but rather to bear testimony to His other sons that have already made covenants and just need to begin keeping them again.

We are being blessed and the work is going well. Thank you for your prayers and your love. I feel so blessed to be able to follow all of your examples and learn from you.

I love you.

Elder Case

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