Novemember 23, 2013

      

Merry Christmas, Feliz Navidad, 메리 크리스마스, کریسمس مبارک, In whatever language you speak.

  
       
         This week has been really good like amazingly good. 

So last week you know how one of our investigators wanted to be baptized? Well this past week we had a lesson with him and he set the baptisimal dat of the 12th of January. In fact it was a very cool lesson. We went into his restaurant(that is where we are teaching them). We began teaching him the Gospel of Jesus Christ and about halfway through in walk some members from my old ward (specifically the boldest and most zealous and dedicated person i have ever met about sharing the gospel and she is the Relief Society President and who are currently serving a service mission for BYU-I). So we about to invite Sam when in walk the missionaries(whom the member was going to feed). So by the end of the lesson their was a very very powerful Spirit there with 6 set apart missionaries, there because they loved this one man. Oh yea previously we had contacted this same member about Sam for some help with local fellowshipping and she has been sending every person from the ward that she can their to wat at his little restaurant. We are pretty sure that she also had the YM/YW go caroling to them at the restaurant. Super cool.

Sam also came to church and he brought his son. Who lives in TEmecula which is like 2 hours away! they loved it and his son said he would search out Lds people there and try to go to church there. We also knew of a baptisim that Sunday and so we invited Sam to it and he said he would come. He cam a little late and missed the actual baptisim because the GPS told him wrong but  it was good anyway because he was able to see some of the confirmations which he loved. We were also able to use the powerful Spirit that was there to help us teach him the Word of Wisdom. Which he then committed to keep it.

Saturday we had an amazing Christmas party with Sister Larson. Who invited everyone she could along with our investigators. So the amazing thing was that when all was said and done everyone their was either a member and most being Recent Converts of 5 years to 2 months or at some level investigating the church. which was super incredible especially when our mission President stopped by because he was invited too. HE was able to see so much good work that has been done by the Lord for the Persians in  preparing them to receive the gospel. So cool until they had us give a talk in Persian. Which was super cool and super hard. So we read a scripture in Persian and bore our testimonies about Christ and the truthfulness of the season. Super cool. They also had us pray in Persian. So i did the opening prayer to bless the food and i forgot the word for food! I won't know that like 20 people have told me what  it is. It was awesome.

So on Friday we had our Christmas Devotional. It was so good. There was an incredible Spirit there as we sung and heard scriptures from all of the Standard works about the birth of Christ during the program. Then we also had an amazing testimony meeting about our Missionwide Book of Mormon reading. It was so amazing to see how it has changed the culture of out mission from when i first got here to now. This past year has been absolutely incredible. unexpressably so.

Elder Craner