Aug 19 2013

Last week we had the coolest experience with our investigator from Peru. It occurred last Tuesday, just after we finished emailing.

He told us how he has been recently thinking a lot about something my last companion asked him to do: pray and ask specifically if Joseph Smith is a true prophet and the Book of Mormon is true. I don't know if I mentioned this last week but last Monday we went with him to an FHE held at our Mission President's home. The FHE was about repentance and the atonement, and our investigator felt like it was made for him (though it had been planned a month beforehand). He talked that night about he was thinking he wanted to be baptized.

Back to Tuesday. He said that the only thing he wanted to do was really know if the Book of Mormon is true, then he would get baptized. When we first met him, he was praying for things like repentance, how he can grow closer to God, and so forth. But he felt like it was the right time now to pray to ask a question.

And so he did-- right there! We prayed with him. At the end of his pray, he looked up at us happily and described how he had received and answer right there. He had felt the Holy Spirit as if it had entered him through his back. He also heard a voice, not his own, telling him: It's true, go ahead, go.

It was awesome. He knew he wanted to be baptized, so we set his date for the 31st, but later on he moved it even closer, to this Saturday!! I'm so excited for him!

That was definitely the best part of the week. We went to the temple on Wednesday, our P-day. We had a lot of first lessons this week, just like last week (not quite as many but it was close--we taught more lessons overall this week). The next best part of the week was that 9 investigator came to church! If everyone had shown up, we could have had 16+ people there, but a lot of people fell through. Our goal is to get 20 nonmembers at church one Sunday.

There was at least one other cool experience: one of our new investigators, when we found out that we were Mormons, says that a long time ago he read an article written by a Harvard Business professor (Bloomberg news or something?) about receiving an answer about the truth of the Book of Mormon, and when he realized that we were Mormons too he became really excited about reading the Book of Mormon himself. It's a small little miracle. Thanks to whoever wrote that article, haha.

That's about it for the week. Take care everyone!

Elder J. Colton Ladd