Phenomenal letter. I can't believe so much can go on back there in just one week! I also can't believe that Kyler is home. That blows my mind. Ok so for the Christmas call: We have sacrament meeting in Cactus View at 9:00 and then in the YSA at 1:00. But I think it would be good if YOU could call ME around 3:30. Yes, I still have the same number as last Christmas. :)
Some awesome things happened this week. One might include another long story about Mark Coleman. This week he came to our Monday night FHE which was a huge dinner and then White Elephant gift exchange. There were about 75 people there which is good for our YSA. My gift that I brought was a Book of Mormon in Croatian. People laughed. I was also the first to choose and happened to pick a Batman cape. It was a hot item and got stolen very quickly. Anyways, so Mark was talking to some members and started talking to one of them who just returned home from her mission. She found out that Mark is into canning foods and she asked if he would teach her. He of course said yes but didn't think that anything would come from it. She then said, "ok well how about Wednesday?" He was a bit shocked but set up a time to teach her. Tuesday night, Mark came to our Book of Mormon class and met with one of the bishopric members afterwards to see about getting him a temple recommend. Mark was so stoked. He asked him about being a full tithe payer. Mark said that he wasn't able to at the moment because of some giant loans he has been having to pay back from when he had surgery on his eye way back in the Spring. He was pretty bummed to find that out but when he got home, the Spirit hit him with a prompting. Mark is a huge fan of guns and remembered that he has a whole slew of them in his home. He realized the seriousness of being a full tithe payer and also a temple recommend holder. The next day at work he put a sign up at work in the window at his desk that he was selling all his guns. By lunch time, they were sold. He got the money a paid all the tithing that he owed, including some for the future. Wednesday came, the returned sister missionary and a friend went to Mark's house and upon leaving after canning blueberries, she turned around and randomly told Mark that he should serve a mission. Immediately Mark responded with, "well if I did that then I would lose all my credits at school, money would be hard, blah blah blah..." Her response, "You should pray about it." Right then he knew that if he prayed about it, his answer would be he needed to serve. That night he prayed. His answer came. He explained it by saying it was as if he was being held by someone in a very large warm blanket. He said the literal feeling of God's presence was undeniable and so powerful. He is determined to serve a mission. The next day he set up a meeting with the bishop to settle his tithing, get his recommend, and ask about the process of serving a proselyting mission. The only problem? He turned 25 in September, and he was baptized in November. Age 26 is the cut off to serve missions. Apparently there is special permission that can be granted for those who are recent converts. President Hettinger is on the ball and is going to be trying to get him permission. That would be so dang awesome! He would be a phenomenal missionary. He got us Christmas presents and brought them to church. It is a very nice framed picture of the Phoenix temple. I'll probably send it home sometime with the letter that he sent me.
Saturday our zone had 3 more baptisms. The total is now at a new record on the year. Though the 110 didn't get reached, it is still so cool to see 100+ baptisms two years in a row. The stake presidency and high councilman over missionary work are quite enthused about it all. At the beginning of the year, nobody really believed that we would be able to do as well as last year. The reason being that all the "part-member families" or "low-hanging fruit" as some call them were mined. This year the missionaries did phenomenal work at "finding the elect" and seeing them to baptism. It's awesome to go back and look at the records and see the percentage of those found through street contacting/tracting to those that were member referrals. This year there are many more found through the missionaries than last year. Hopefully next year both sides will contribute even more.
The mission Christmas Zone Conference was on Wednesday this week. We listened to some awesome musical numbers and then drove out to Mesa to do a session and see the lights at the temple. It was so cool to see Sister Keddington there. She saw me and pulled me right out of a crowd! I was pretty amazed that she even remembered my name. (She wrote to Colton's family and shared the following: “He looked fantastic and the spirit radiating from him was clearly visible. He seems so, so happy to be doing the Lord's work. You have every reason to be proud of the missionary and the man he has become/is becoming. Thank you for raising such a wonderful son and setting such a good example for him. Thank you for sharing him with the people in Arizona. Take it from me, they need him! I just wanted you to know that he is doing great, that he loves you, and that he is happy.”
I spoke in sacrament meeting yesterday. I'm going to send out the copy of my talk with the Christmas card that we made today. I don't really know how good it was but I hope you like it. My topic was "The True Meaning of Christmas - Becoming Christ-like."
I hope that you have an awesome Christmas. I'm excited to hear from you all.
Love,
Elder Mouritsen
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