Weekly Letter 8-31-09

I'm glad to hear about you doing missionary work! Remember, Missionary Work is easy! All you have to do is deliver a Short Powerful Satement: 1) Give a piece of restored truth (ie:the Book of Mormon) 2) testify 3)promise blessings and invite to church, to speak with missionaries etc.
Sounds like all the boys are doing well. I sure do miss them little guys. I'm glad that Slade and Alyse are getting things together. The Lord loves them and won't ever fail them. Remember that "A study of the gospel will change behavior much quicker than a study of behavior will change behavior." -Boyd K. Packer. I'm so proud of Erin and James. They've made some enormous strides and they will continue to be blessed for it. I'm excited about their FHE group and their willingness to do Baptisms so they can participate. Members of the church need to realize that the gospel is not an individual thing. Sure, salvation is given on an individual basis, but exhaltation is a family matter. If we are not inviting others to come unto Christ then we are failing in our quest to become like Christ and obtain the blessings. We must meet people at their level of spirituality and then help them up the cliff to our own. That group, whether consiously or unconciously, understands that principle.
I got the program and the medication today. With the medication, just send it to the mission office address, but make sure that who you send it with has a forwarding service. Otherwise I won't get it except for every 6 weeks. I can't think of anything else I need right now. Thanks though. I'm glad that the letter got there. I forced myself to make time last week to write them. That's cool about grandma Mullenax though. I hope that she continues to read it. Also, what is her email address?
We have been ridiculously busy lately. We have been teaching upwards of 20 lessons each week. So this week we started officially teaching another family. Their names are Nick and Ashley. They have a 4-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl. We started teaching them because they live across the street from Richard and Susan(another family we are teaching). Well, in our first meeting with them Ashley talked about how she wants an eternal family. She says that family is the most important thing to her and Nick also wants their family to be together forever. So in the first meeting we taught the plan of salvation. We taught about how the purpose of this life is to prepare to meet God. We then mentioned how repentence is a big part of that preparation. At the end of the lesson Ashley asked us how she can repent. She said that she wants to feel cleansed and happy and not feel guilty for things she's done in the past. We told her that we would teach her how in our next lesson. So our second lesson with them we have a member of the bishopric there. We chose to teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ because it contains the principle of repentence. She loved it and the Bishopric member was giving so much good information. Plus he was testifying of how it blessed his life. Well, we got to the principle of Baptism. When we got done teaching it the spirit was very strong. It was then that I decided that we needed to invite them to be baptized. So, under the influence of the Spirit I asked them if they would be baptized. They both excitedly replied Yes! So in our second lesson with them we helped them decide to make the covenant with God to recieve baptism. Their goal date is the 19th of September. I'm so excited for them. I'm so happy that we are getting to teach a family. We are teaching almost nothing except families! God is blessing our area so much!
Well, I better be going. We have grocery shopping to do. Oh, I won't be able to email next week because the library will be closed. I love you all. I'll talk to you again soon.
Love, Elder Mullenax