Elder Spencer Romney : january 12, 2015 letter

This week was probably one of the best weeks that i have had on my mission! I have seen the hand of the Lord so so much this week! It is amazing to see how much the Lord is preparing the people of Oregon.

We were able to find three new families this week and it was really awesome how we found them. The first family, which I think you already know about who we got as a referral from one of the members and is cousins with one of the ladies in the ward. We basically went up to her and asked her if she would read the book of mormon and left her a chapter and when we came back that week she had read that chapter 3 times over and pretty much recited it to me. It was so cool. And her daughter who is 18 said that she wants to start taking the lessons with us too, so they are two super awesome and solid investigators, the only struggle will be trying to get the son and the dad in the picture as well. They were able to come to church and we are planning on putting them on date here pretty soon.

Another family is a woman and her boyfriend The other day I was on exchanges with one of the zone leaders and we got a call from this number saying that she had gone to the chapel and somebody gave them our number as missionaries and that she decided to call us. So we set up an appointment with her and went over to her house the next day. Come to find out she is a taxi driver and drove one of our families to the church and they invited her to come to church one day and listen to the missionaries and gave her our number. When we got there we were able to sit down and talk to her for a little bit and she told us about this dream that she had about how Jesus Christ had come to her in a dream and told her that she needed to find the right church and start being more faithful. So she decided to call us and we went over and were able to teach her and her boyfriend and they are so ready for the gospel! They also came to church just this last Sunday!

The last family that we found. The other night, (don't remember if i told you this already or not) but the other night we were driving home and there was this car in the middle of the road. It looked like it was broken down and wasn't working, so we pulled over and offered some help to them and then gladly accepted us to jump start there car. We then give them a card and a pamphlet and tell them who we are and go on our way, until i looked in the rear view mirror and saw that their car had died again, so we parked the car and got out and went to go help them again. We ended up pushing them about a half mile into the apt. complex where they were staying, and then we were able to exchange numbers and they said that we could come by any day that we wanted! We finally were able to catch them just about 5 or so days ago and went in to teach them about the book of mormon. Holy cow it was probably the worst lesson that we have ever given as a companionship, not because of lack of unity, or lack of doctrine, but because of the lack of ability to talk in spanish while we were there. It was literally like our tongues wouldn't work! Come to find out after the lesson and being frustrated about it that it was probably one of the biggest blessings from the Lord not to be able to talk for that period of time. Looking back at the body language of the father he seemed a little jealous, probably because we were teenage boys in his house, and because he didn't know any doctrine about the bible and his wife knew a lot. He probably felt like he was below everyone there and we wouldn't have been able to come back. But having our tongues bound for that moment of time made him still feel like the man of the house and that he was better than us and it made us all laugh the whole time. because really our spanish is good, but for some reason we couldn't say anything right! I think the lord blessed us (what we thought was a punishment at the time) to be able to get in with the dad and help him not feel intimidated by us. We went over there on sunday and had an amazing lesson with them and explained everything super well and after they were like, wow, why haven't I heard of the restoration before? They also said that we had really good spanish(: haha and they came to church as well this last Sunday!

This past Sunday was probably one of the craziest Sundays ever! We don't start church till 1 so we normally go around and remind investigators about church and stuff like that. But when we got there, 3 families came to church! but with those three families we had 12 people at church which is a new record for Woodburn! It's not quite the mission record, but 2 away and we would have broken it(: we also had a record of the highest attendance in our branch this past week at 149 people! That is amazing because we average about 105 people each week at sacrament. And then afterwards we had the baptism, one of the sisters investigators who i aboslutley love to death and is practically my mom out here on the mission! She is the one that always takes care of us and gives us food and everything(: It was so amazing because her son was able to get baptized and elder perryman and i pretty much did everything! We unlocked everything, filled the font, were the witnesses, sang, mopped everything up, printed the flyers and had a bunch of investigators there. It was so cool to see all the people there, almost our entire branch was there and a bunch of our investigators were crying!! I cant wait; we plan to put all of these people on date and possible baptize them in the month of February(: I hope the Lord keeps me here because the work is starting to boom and I love all of these families so much that i am working with! Keep me in your prayers that i can stay here with them!(:

I love you guys so much!

Love, Elder Romney(: