Elder Jesse Kissell: My amazing week of awesomeness!

Howdy folks!

Well, this week was a sweet one! It’ll be a more exciting letter this week, I promise.

So, Martin still rocks the world and guess what? We met a new investigator who is also pretty darn golden who ALSO has a baptismal date!!! Sweetness!! But, let me give you your weekly Martin report. We were actually pretty nervous for a few days this week because he wouldn’t answer his phone or return our phone calls, but it turns out that he was fairly sick and just forgot. But he did call our ward mission leader to ask if he could get a blessing. How did he know about blessings? Golden I’m tellin ya. But we didn’t know til a day past that he requested a blessing due to miscommunication with our ward mission leader so we weren’t able to see him and give him one. But, he finally answered his phone, feeling much better, and we set up a time to go see him. We shared a lesson on faith. We did this with the intention being to boost his faith that he will be able to get all Sundays totally off. He already has plenty of it, so we just reviewed faith basically and shared some scriptures with him that he totally loved. He really liked Alma 37:6-7, by small and simple means, great things are brought to pass, and Alma 37:36-37, counsel with the Lord in all that you do. He was all over both those scriptures highlighting them and everything. So it was a great lesson and he felt a lot and enjoyed it. And church yesterday was another super great experience for him. It was ward conference yesterday and the stake presidency gave great talks, I thought that they were some of the best sacrament talks I’ve ever heard before, and they really hit home to Martin. He really felt the spirit and loved it. In the second hour, it’s a new stake presidency and so we had sort of just an informal question and answer thing with the counselors of the stake presidency. The majority of the first questions had to do with young couples asking what they should do with their kids so that they could attend the temple more frequently and still have a spiritual experience and questions a lot like that. We’ve taught Martin a lot about temples, but he, like the rest of us, still had questions about the temple. He asked another very profound and amazing question. He asked “I am fairly new here still and I have heard a lot about temples, in fact, the most beautiful of your temples is in my home back in Ghana, I want to know what the temple is, what you do there, and how I can go inside.” Whoa!! The counselors answered his question perfectly and they asked “how long have you been a member for?” Martin says “well, I am not one yet.” “You’re an investigator!! Wow! Well you need to be a member first and it seems to me like you’re right on track to the temple!” It was awesome. Then there were more questions, but to finish up the hour, one of the counselors turned and looked directly at Martin, bore his testimony that the church was true, and closed the meeting. SWEEEEEEEETTTTTT!!!!!! It rocked. We then had a linger longer thing afterwards, a potato bar, and Martin stuck around for that and bishop snagged him and took him to his office just to talk to him and get to know him a little better. They were talking for 20 minutes or so and Martin came back out and found us and said that bishop made him feel very loved and special and that he was very touched and teary eyed. He loves church and is so excited to be baptized!! I talked to bishop about their discussion too and he is totally impressed and excited for him. All Martin really needs now is to get Sundays off, so please pray for him. He is so stinkin awesome. I wish you guys could meet him.

So now, let me tell you about Tim. Tim is a 29 year old guy who has had one crazy life. He’s had the kind of life you only hear or see on movies. He’s been involved heavily with drugs the past 12 years of his life, he had a very hard childhood, he has had some very bad friends that have gotten him into some bad habits, and yeah, his life has been something that nobody should have to go through, but he has. On new years, he had an epiphone that God really did exist and that he was far from him. He wanted to be closer to him and to feel clean again. Since New Years, he has quit cold turkey drugs and alcohol. He celebrated 30 days of sobriety and being clean just the other day and is loving life so much better now. He met one of the Spanish elders on the bus and they referred him to us and we went and met him on Wednesday and saw him again yesterday and set a baptismal date for him for the 27th! He is super humble and wants to be clean again. He feels terrible for all the things he’s done and been involved with and wants to feel new again. That’s the atonement baby!! He’s had some pretty terrible experiences in his life with other people, who he has grown to love and accept and wants to use his experience to help troubled youth like himself stay away from the path that he followed. He’s so cool. He also came to church yesterday, only for the first hour though cuz he had to go to a meeting, but he loved ward conference and the messages that were shared as well. He really like the scripture in 3 Nephi 27:19-20 about how baptism cleanses us completely. We asked if he wanted that and he said “yes, that sounds awesome.”

So yeah, we have some pretty sweet stuff going on here. I am loving it here in Mad-town. Despite the fact it’s huge, we are having a ton of fun, we are teaching great people that I am learning so much from, and I am totally loving my mission. President is very excited about our success and is excited to meet these awesome investigators. We are also getting to know more members here and they are excited about Martin and are giving us referrals and excited to be involved in the work. Sweet sweet stuff folks. Even though it was way cold this week, we were roastin and toastin with the spirituality!!! Hooray for the gospel and hooray for missionary work!! I love you all!!

Love
Elder Jesse Kissell

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