Baptism and Conference

Well... the highlight this week was when Mark was baptized. The changes that have happened in his life are seriously awesome. He is only 16 years old and he dropped out of school 2 years ago so that he could just work. He was hooked on cigarettes and had lots of other problems. He met the missionaries almost 2 years ago when his cousin was baptized. He has been taught on and off, but he finally decided that he was going to take things seriously to try to turn his life around. He is super shy, but when he got up to bear his testimony after his baptism, the spirit was seriously awesome!! He just talked about the atonement and the power that the Atonement has to change the life of anyone. It was awesome!!

This week just kind of ripped by. All of the missionaries were looking forward to the "conference updates" since we don't get to watch conference until this upcoming weekend. It is amazing!! 8 new temples. And some awesome changes to the youth programs that will allow the church to continue to move forward. 

This week, we also saw a miracle with one of the families that we are teaching. The parents and 4 of the kids are baptized. One of their sons has kind of distanced himself from the family because he had no desire to be baptized. But, he attended a branch party that we had last week. He felt the spirit and the love of the members and immediately came up to us to ask if he could be baptized. We told him that he just has to come to church 4 times and we needed to finish teaching him the lessons. So, we put him on date exactly 4 weeks away. His family is looking forward to the day when they will get to go to the temple to be sealed as a family. 

This week in our teaching, we taught a lot about prophets and apostles. That is how Christ established His church and that is how His church is led today. It is awesome!! The church is moving forward at an amazing rate and it is sooo fun to be a part of. I love you all and am thankful for the thoughts and prayers. 

Love Elder Thomas