I’m so so so jealous you get to see H and K. I miss those girls like crazy! Thank you for the advice for my companion. I definitely have gotten pretty decent at teaching lessons. The entire time I’ve been in B I’ve lead the lessons. there is always stuff I need to work on though and sometimes I let it frustrate me when I think about all the things I need to work on and I don’t know where to start but at least I realize what I can work on.
So this email probably won’t be very long because not a lot happened besides the meeting with Elder Ballard. I’m going to start off by saying that that person we were going to go see that said we could come back "wasn’t there" we could hear them inside though. So what we are going to do is have the less active member down the road that knows him talk with him and just bear his testimony to him and see if that can help. These last few days have been super hot! Sunday it got up to 100 the two days before that it was in the high 90's and today was the low 90's. Luckily it will be back in the 70's by Thursday this next week. So even though we didn’t have too much of a successful week again we do have I think 12 set appointments for this upcoming week! So that will be a good thing! We also have president interviews and I finaalllyyy get to go to the temple on Wednesday! Okay so now I’m going to talk about Elder Ballard.
Okay so all the missionaries got to the building in F where he was meeting and all just talked for a bit before it was going to start. Eventually we were all seated in the chapel and the medical guy over our mission called me out in the hall because I had talked to him on the phone the day before. I had athletes foot but it’s almost gone from my toes but I had another area right down by my arch that I thought was athletes foot but it wasn’t going away like the other part and it was starting to hurt so I was asking him about it and he told me what to do for it and I’m all good now. Anyways so he went back inside and I was sitting there in the foyer and put my shoe back on and stood up and was close to being back inside the chapel when here comes none other than Elder M. Russell Ballard, Elder Whiting of the 70, Elder Bowen of the 70, and Elder Hyum? who gave a GREAT talk and he is way up there too. So I just stopped and moved against the wall so they could go past and they all smiled at me and then Elder Ballard said "Hello Elder! What’s your name?" and then just asked how I was doing and he was glad I could be here! I went back in and was super excited! After we were all sat down everyone got to get up and go shake their hands and when I got up he said "Hello again Elder Graf!" It was amazing! The feeling in that building was awesome! You really couldn’t help but smile and you just felt sooo happy! It was awesome! So Elder Hyum spoke about Prayer and how important it is to have the investigators and less actives know how to pray and make sure they are doing it. He talked about a guy when he was a mission president that his sister missionaries were teaching and they couldn’t set a baptism date with him and didn’t know what his holdup was so they asked Elder Hyum what to do and he told them that he wanted to meet with them so he met with them and then a couple weeks later the sisters called again and said he still wouldn’t commit to being baptized. Elder Hyum met with them again and asked the father to pray and he sat there quietly and finally said that he didn’t know how to pray. Once he was taught he opened the prayer and as soon as he started he began to weep. After the prayer he asked Elder Hyum what was happening to him and he told him that it was an answer to his prayers. A couple weeks later he was baptized. It just shows how important it is to have your investigators pray. I will NEVER forget how strong the Spirit was when James finally prayed for us. It was amazing.
I don’t remember what Elder Whiting talked about. oops.
Elder Bowen talked a little about making sure we are being obedient and about the Abrahamic Covenant and how we need to all understand it as best we can and try to live by it as best as we can. He then told us that if we aren’t being perfectly obedient we shouldn’t be telling people to change and repent. It was pretty interesting.
Now Elder Ballard his topic and talk wasn’t really all that long. He spoke about giving our missions to the Lord. Completely turning them over for him so that we may be successful and come home feeling accomplished. He then had people ask him questions and I don’t remember really any of the good ones. The only good one I remember is a missionary asked how he can help his mother back into activity while serving his mission. Elder Ballard answered by telling him to just share his spiritual experiences with her and eventually she will come back. It was pretty neat. He also was extremely funny! It was a big surprise to me! We just made some really funny comments. One of them was this... he was speaking of other churches and how our ordinances are important and he said this of another church "some people just say "I’m saved.".... false doctrine if I ever heard it." and he said it just in such a way that it made it super funny. Anyways it was an amazing meeting and I think the best thing I got out of it was the feeling of being in the presence of an Apostle of the Lord. It was really great!
Well that’s all for the last few days! I love you tons dad and miss you!
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