Southern Fried Chicken...ridiculously delicious.

Ok so last week I forgot to tell you about all of the firsts that I experienced. I had my first real southern meal which included fried chicken (ridiculously delicious), mashed potatoes, fried okra (some weird vegetable that they batter and fry and it is way good), and squash casserole (I think the best food ever. It has tons of cheese in it.) I ate my first Georgia peach, which was amazing. I saw my first lightning bug. GA is pretty awesome. I'm happy to be here experiencing all of this.

 

Things went pretty well this week. We're progressing with our same investigators, teaching them the gospel, trying to help them feel the spirit. We met with this guy Jason on Wednesday. He told us how he had been reading the Book of Mormon and loves it. He said he knows that it is the word of God and that Joseph Smith was a prophet. It's so much fun to watch investigators actually progress and come to love the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. We had a recent convert present at the lesson who explained to him getting rebaptized (which was a relief for us) and that the LDS chuch contains the fullness of the Gospel. It went really well. We met with him again on Saturday and watched "Safety For The Soul" by Jeffrey R Holland. He loved that too. Church was amazing for him as well. He stayed all 3 hours and loved every minute of it. He is accepting the message of the restoration and loves it.

 

On Friday Elder Zundel and I had the Trainer/Trainee meeting, which was pretty good. It was fun because I got to see my buddies from the MTC again. President King gave us a good lesson which included a lot about the importance of bearing testimony and increasing our testimonies so that we can truly bear witness to investigators. That is a powerful thing. Later that night we met with Bruce and had a very spiritually powerful meeting. He finally prayed out loud and now that he does it is so very spiritual. The way that we got him to pray (for months he has refused to pray out loud with us there) was by asking him to say The Lord's Prayer and instead of saying give us our daily bread ask for a different, more personal blessing in his life. Once he did that he prayed for minutes-- it was truly beautiful. He knows the messages we share are true, and he is now working on building his faith more so that he can act how he knows he should.

 

Yesterday we spoke in church. Our ward mission leader spoke on the Vision of the South and how the members are responsible for Finding and how the missionaries are responsible for Teaching. After that Elder Zundel sang "I'll Go Where You Want Me To Go" and it was beautiful. We all felt the spirit so strongly. I spoke next and talked about the many ways that the Restored Gospel blesses our lives. I told the parable of the talents and said it doesn't matter how far along we are just as long as we are always moving forward having faith in Christ. I encouraged the members to pray for opportunities to bear their testimony this next week to nonmembers. I like talking in church, it was a good time.

 

I had a humbling experience last night. We are told as missionaries that we mustn't teach a thing without the spirit present and I didn't follow that counsel. Larry was asking us questions about the spirit world and temples and we just didn't have the spirit of understanding with us at the moment so it was a long and very back and forth lesson if that makes sense. I need to work on listening to the investigators better and to always be praying to Heavenly Father while we are teaching a lesson that the Holy Spirit will be there. Without the Holy Ghost we aren't missionaries, just kids trying to convince people that they don't have it all. Haha anyway things are still great with him-- he loves us and we love him. We'll be back this week and we'll try to do things better than last time.

 

Missionary work is fun. P-days are fun too. Last week we went to the Chattahoochee River. It was a beautiful day, clear skies, sunny, no humidity. I had a real good time. I hope all is well at home! You guys are number one. Thanks for everything.

 

Love,

Elder M Caplin