We had a busy week for sure. The cool thing is we got about 8 Native American kids to come to church! We had to get them all rides and coordinate the rides carefully. If a lot of cars show up all at once, it's overwhelming for the people on the reservation. They kind of freak out, they're pretty sensitive. So we tried to not make a scene and it worked out well! The kids liked church and want to come back... they even stayed for Primary. Now we just hope their parents will come as well! It was successful though - almost like an operation to get everyone rides and make sure that it went smoothly!
We had two really fantastic lessons this week: one was with Dave and Paula. We came into it knowing we were going to teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ lesson but if they hadn't read the Book Of Mormon since we last saw them, then we would switch gears and read the Book of Mormon. We got inside and sadly they hadn't read since we last saw them. We had to think on the fly of where we should read. While I was thinking, the member who was with us at the lesson opened up his scriptures on his phone and the first thing he had open was 3 Nephi 11 - where Christ comes to the Americas and teaches about baptism - so I thought to myself "yeah why not that one?" We read probably 8 verses out of 3 Nephi 11 and while we were going around the circle reading, Paula landed on a verse that is the baptismal prayer (Paula is a convert from years ago) and the spirit instantly flooded the room. She choked up while reading the verse and started to cry. (This was a miracle because she seemed like a hard one to crack!) That lesson was such a great one. It wasn't us who taught her that day, it was the spirit.
The other awesome lesson was with Cari. Vikki wasn't able to make it but we had it at our Bishop's house. During the lesson, we decided to read 2 Nephi 31, also about baptism. Up until this point, Cari has been reluctant to set a date for baptism. In that chapter, Christ invites us to "follow thou me" - so I asked Cari if she would take Christ's words to heart and follow Him. She said yes, she would like to do that. We talked about how one of the first things we can do to follow Christ is to be baptized by someone who holds His priesthood authority. She said she'd like to do that too!! The I asked if we could set a date for her to be baptized and she said she likes the month of May, so we set her date for May 25th! That was super exciting for me. Now we need to set a date for Vikki as well, we will do that this week. We are also going to make a plan with them to go to the Oakland Temple open house. Exciting times!
The Song of the Week is "Can I Kick It?" by A Tribe Called Quest.
Pray for me so I won't burn up out here! It's the last week of the transfer, gotta finish strong!
Much love,
Elder Thompson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3pyCGnZzYA Can I Kick It? A Tribe Called Quest
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