Awesome Week

This week has been pretty awesome actually. Our mission tour was this week, Elder Pieper from the seventy came and we had a mission conference with him. It was really cool! A couple take-aways I got were:

1. the equation Doubt + Obedience = A Witness. See John 7:17 and Ether 12:6

2. All behaviors, Good or Bad are the result of a misunderstanding of the doctrine or Principles of the gospel.

For Example: Not paying tithing. If the person really understood that,

Doctrine: God Created heavens and the earth and all things therein

Principle: The lord asks for 10 percent of our increase (what he's allowed us to have) as a show of our faith and trust in him and for the building up of the kingdom of god on earth.

BONUS: He promises to pour out a blessing that we "won't have room to receive" if we do obey this commandment
Then they would change their behavior to obey that commandment.

I really liked that and can see how I can apply that to my missionary work.

3. Finding in missionary work can get discouraging if we don't understand. "We're not looking for everyone, we're looking for the elect." (those who are ready to accept the message.) We should pray earnestly to find them and then "think about where they might live, which members might know them, when would be a good time to find them" and then go look for them. If someone turns you down, says they're not interested, than you can move on to the next door to find someone that is ready.

It was a very inspiring conference and I look forward to using these to find more people and meet the branch, and mission yearly goals for baptism.

so 2 days later while we went to contact a referral, we were driving there and I was thinking about where to find the "Elect" I saw an apartment complex that I'd never been to before, and I didn't think any spanish missionary would have gone here recently, but it stuck out to me. So we kept driving contacted the referral and I thought to go to the other side of town where we had planned to knock doors that day. As we were driving back along that road though, Elder Judd asked, "So do you think we should knock some doors in this area?" I agreed, and we went to the apartment complex I had seen. After knocking a couple doors a guy answered and said there was no soliciting here, and to leave. We hadn't seen a sign, so we kept going. I think 3 doors later we found a family of 6 who let us in and received the message of the Restoration. It was Awesome! We have a return appointment for tonight!

Well last bit of info, we found out our branch presidency was getting changed along with some other changes and they were having a meeting to announce all the changes and the new presidency at a meeting last night. So we went and President Ross and his counselors were released, than they released the second counselor in the Stake Presidency, President Harbertson and called him as our new branch President. I could really feel the spirit as he bore his testimony and I'm excited for the work he'll do in this branch!

Everyone have a good week!

Elder Partridge