This week was good. We had interviews with the President on Tuesday. We went out to eat lunch with him and his wife. It was really nice. Our Mission President is awesome and also his wife. There are never dull moments with them because they are hilarious. Later that day after the interviews things were crazy in East St. Louis. Everyone was outside. It was awesome because we contacted so many people that day with everyone outside. It was a real nice day. It was up in the 70's. But that helped to our success this week. The next day was awesome at scripture study we teach the next night. It is really a great finding idea. We have been instructed by our President Clark to use Preach My Gospel in all our dinner thoughts with members. So we take them around and do an activity in there with the members. Since we never get fed except by Sister Lehr we do not get the opportunity to do that as much. So we decided to use PMG for all our scripture studies we have on Wednesday night and using sections in there to teach out of. It is cool though because every member should have PMG and using it to. Because every member is a missionary. And the best way to gain more investigators is through the Members.
Thursday while at an investigators place we gained a new investigator from the guys cousin who was there. We went to go teach the new guy the next day and he was not home. But the guys brother was home and we ended up teaching him. He really liked what he heard so now we have two new investigators. We dropped a couple of people so now we are down to 16 investigators. But we have been starting to sift through everyone we teach to tell who is serious about all of this and who is not. I hate dropping people but if they will not keep commitments then what can we do? Saturday night we went to teach Bro. Falk, the Jewish guy who has M.S. It was awesome because he said the opening prayer and closed in the Name of Jesus Christ. That meant a lot on the fact that Jews do not believe that Jesus was the messiah. I was super happy at that point but then at the end when we gave him the challenge to pray to know if Joseph Smith was a Prophet and if what we are teaching is true. He then said I am satisfied in being Jewish and following what his heritage is. So it was real sad because I know that he believes in what we are teaching because I can tell when he his feeling the spirit and even said that he felt the spirit with what we taught. But he denied it. He still wants us to come over and teach him. His wife loves having us over too because she is not to knowledgeable of the Gospel and loves to hear it and learn from us. So we will see what happens with that. We went to the temple Saturday morning. It is so nice to go the Temple and feel the spirit so strongly and feel that great peace there. Every time I am there the worries of the world are gone and everything else. I always feel at home when I am there. It is a great Blessing to have the Temple so close to us here and being able to go to it once a transfer.
We are now in our 5th week of the transfer. It is going by so quick! I am really curious to see if I will stay here for another transfer or now. If I am here from another transfer that will be a quarter of my mission spent here in East St. Louis. So we will see what happens though. Still another week and a half till we get transfer calls. It is a ton of fun here though and very exciting. Plus we teach a ton which is the best part of being here. We are always busy. I Convinced the Mission Presidents wife, Sister Clark to work on getting us a car for our area. She was surprised that we did not have one. Even President Clark was surprised we did not have one. I told him that this area use to have a car back when it was a ward. But since the area was condensed it lost the car. So now I have them both convinced to get us a car in this area. The reason we need a car is because busing around everywhere makes it hard to see everyone every week. I said if they can not get us a car then another good thing would to get another set of Missionaries in the branch. We have enough work for it compared to other wards who have two sets. Hopefully something happens with either a car or another set in the next transfer. It would be cool.
Yesterday was awesome because John Johnson who was Baptized a couple weeks ago and confirmed last week was had the aaronic priesthood conferred upon him and was ordained to the office of a Priest yesterday. It was so awesome to see this all happen. He has really changed his life around. This Sunday Moneesha should be finally Baptized. She has been keeping the W.O.W. for a couple of weeks now. It will be really cool because This Sunday is also Branch Conference so the Whole Stake Presidency will be there for it. I really hope she goes through with it this week. She really needs this now.
Today on the Way here on the Metro Link a Jehova's witness lady who was riding the Metro link to just hand out people the Watch Tower Magazine and and preach offered me one. I denied her the offer. She then went on preaching to me. Some of the things she said was good stuff. They do not believe in the trinity and I shared with her a couple of scriptures in the Bible that I really like after she showed me something. I then started to teach her and state our beliefs in this church. She kept refering to God the Father as Jehovah. So when I started to state our beliefs I told her that Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament, is Jesus Christ before he was born on this Earth. And that Heavenly Father is Elohim. I then taught most of the Restoration to her and testified to her that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the only true church with the fulness of the Gospel. That no other Church has the Priesthood authority of God. It was so nice because we were not bashing at all with eachother. She listened to me very sincerely. She then asked me if I was raised in the Church. I told her yes, but it is my choice to me a member of this church and to be a missionary. That I had to gain my own testimony that this is the true church. I told her my parents had to do the same thing. It does not matter if you were brought up in this church. You still have to know for yourself if this church is true. And that is the great thing about Personal Revelation. That we all can recieve answers from God to any question we have. She was not like any other Jehovah witness I have talked to. I know the spirit touched her. Hopefully I see her again on the Metro and am able to share more with her. Anyways I hope you all have a great week!!!
Love,
Elder Derek Turner
*Serving in Zion*
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