We had a pretty good week this week. We did some service which was fun, and got a bunch of sweet new investigators. Our other investigators are doing great as well. Things are good in the Pill Mill!
We did sevice for the Carters this week. They are the older ladies in our ward who aren't active, but they love the missionaries. We helped them build a garden! They had soil and railroad ties delivered and we set everything up to make it nice and usable and pretty. I'm super excited that Spring/Summer is here. It's going to be fun. I have a little miniature garden growing on our apartment balcony. My tomato plant is growing strong, it soon should start producing fruit! The Carters are going to teach me how to make salsa.
We also helped a former investigator, Jeremy, do some service this week. He had an armoir (sp?) in his garage that was taking up space so he asked us to help him destroy it. We took it apart with an ax and then put the pieces in his firepit to burn. He put so much wood in the firepit at once that some fell out and set his grass on fire! It seems like I am just meant to be a firefighter here in Cumming, GA. Hahahahaa.
We stopped by to visit this less-active lady that we didn't know much about who lives in the apartment complex right next to us and had an interesting experience. She is 27, raised in the church, but now hates the church. To be honest she was really just a hateful, bratty person. It made me really sad to see how dark and depressing and hateful she was. I was thinking about how sad that was and everything for that night and the next couple days and the thought came to my mind. There might not be too much that we can do for her (or whomever we come in contact with that rejects Christ's gospel), but we can love her like God loves her. By thinking about loving her how God loves her it made me realize that traditional missionary lessons maybe aren't something she needs or will receive. You have to care, think hard about how you can show that God-like love, and just do it out of love.
Crazy week here in the South. We had EXTREME tornado warnings for a little while. Thankfully there wasn't any death or destruction in my area, but in a few areas of the mission and all over ther rest of the South, tragedy did occur. Crazy stuff is happening, and crazy stuff will continue to happen. Bin Laden is now dead. (Sister Carter calls us to tell us weather alerts and world news.)
We got a fantastic sweet new investigator this week. His name is Lou. He is a really, really good guy. He is 24 years old and sincerely searching for something that he feels is missing religiously in his life. We got a text from the MTC on Friday night. Lou was a mormon.org referral. He grew up Catholic, but feels like he needs more in his life. He remembered that he had some Mormon friends in high school. Even though they never told him anything about our religion, he knew they were good kids. Soooooo, based off of their good examples in high school he decided to check out mormon.org and investigate the church!!!!!!!!!!!! At the end of our meeting with him he 1.) asked what he would need to do to be a member of the church, and 2.) said it's a shame he didn't find this earlier in his life. He said he can remember the missionaries knocking on his door when he was a kid. Basically he is interested in becoming a better Christian, and everything else that the church offers.
Elder Scothern held down the fort for us when I went on an exchange with the Zone Leader this week, and he did a great job. He is a great missionary. He found TONS of new sweet interested people, all ready and wanting to hear the gospel preached to them. We have just been sooooo busy with all of the people that we have to follow up with, because we have so much great work going on here! I am seriously so grateful for it all. It's nice.
Saturday was the Temple Dedication Cultural Celebration and.... President Monson was there!!! We watched the broadcast from the Atlanta Civic Center at our Church Building. It was a great event, really happy and lots of fun. The Georgians did a great job. They kind of did a history of Georgia and the church in Georgia with song and dance. I loved it and so did the Prophet. Haha everyone who was at the event said that when our stake's Young Men did their dance (shown on youtube called "sugar hill stomp", the prophet stood up and gave them a standing ovation. It's such a great time to be serving a mission here. What a blessing to have the temple open again for us.
I am starting to REALLY like Georgia too haha. For real, I love it here in Cumming. It is just the most perfect, fun, beautiful place to live.
Sunday we had the temple dedication. We watched it at the Sugar Hill Stake Center. There were two sessions and we got to watch them both. It was just a great, rare, spiritual experience. During the prayer President Monson prayed that we the missionaries would be able to share the gospel with "power and persuasion" to the people in the temple district. That is now something that I will work on and pray for.
As a mission we read the entire Book of Mormon again before the temple dedication (Yikes! I didn't quite make it....); read DC 109, which was the Dedicatory prayer of the Kirtland Temple; read Alma 31, which is the prayer that Alma offered before he and his companions went to teach the Gospel to many people that didn't have it; and fasted that blessings from heaven will come down that we may have more success as missionaries. We prayed that the Vision of the South will strongly come forth. It was a great experience.
We have seen blessings already. From each of the missionaries that I have talked to there are people ready for the Gospel COMING TO US. God is giving us investigators that are ready for baptism, and want the restored Gospel in their lives. It is simply incredible.
We have been teaching a lot lately. We have been busy with great missionary work. I know that the commandments and teachings from God can truly help our lives, and I am so grateful to be sharing that knowledge with others.
Love you so much, I can't wait to talk to you on Sunday for Mother's Day. Happy day!!!!!
Elder Mikey Caplin
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