A great week :)

Hello everyone!

This week was great. We didn't teach too many lessons but we still saw miracles. We set a baptismal date with Alex who we met with a couple of weeks ago. He is a great guy. Has some mental issues and needs staff to come in every once in a while and check on him. but he is great. We set a date with him for the 21st of June. He is very excited and has all ready read a few chapters in the Book of Mormon. Hopefully he continues to read. We were planning on having a church tour with him on Saturday. But that feel through because he had some family functions going on. But he was able to make it out to church on Sunday despite not knowing what would be going on. and he had an unfamiliar family come pick him up for church... he is a brave guy! Alex loved church. He even went up and bore his testimony in Sacrament meeting which was the super scary but he did a great job! He is super solid and is excited to be baptized. Hopefully things progress with him.

James is another investigator of ours who is a super cool guy and owns a tailor shop. he is super cool. But he didn't make it to church on Sunday and we couldn't get ahold of him... So we will have to see if we can get in touch with him throughout the week. Hopefully things go well with him.

We also have a baptismal date with Calvin Barley for the 21st of June, and we will see how things go with him. He wasn't keeping his commitments for awhile but he read the plan of salvation pamphlet which means he is showing progress! So we will see what happens with him.

Anyways, I am grateful for all of the blessings the Lord has given me. This is a wonderful work to be a part of and I appreciate the Lord and his willingness to let me endeavor in the work of Salvation. It's a great thing to be a part of. I'm grateful for all of my many blessings! I love you all!

Elder Caleb James Wardle

It's getting warm

Hello all you beautiful people. This week was another great one. It started off with zone conference on Tuesday. I love zone conference! It's a great time to get to see all the other missionaries and see how they are doing just so that you know you aren't in this work of salvation alone. I think it's when I can see everyone rallied around each other and hear the thoughts and impressions of their hearts that I receive the most revelation for what I need to be doing. It's amazing to see the Work of Salvation come to pass in my life. At zone conference President Jepsen (the first counselor in our mission presidency) gave us a training. It was basically a good by speech though. He won't be in the presidency much longer :( But he is a great man. And a lot of what he said really toughed me. The assistants to the President, elder Weiss and Elder McGinn gave us a training on the motivation behind us as missionaries and how to give our all to the Lord. It was a great training and I was really inspired by that one as well.

My favorite training was Sister Jensen's though just because her training I was able to apply into my missionary work right away. She trained on fasting and we had a pretty interesting experience that we needed to fast for.

On Thursday we were asked by Elder Weiss and Elder McGinn to stop by their investigators house that was supposed to be baptized on Saturday and just finish filling out the baptismal record with her and explain how the baptism will go and everything. (Elder Weiss and Elder McGinn were across the mission at the other zone conferences so that's why they asked us to teach Hawa). Well we got there and Hawa just immediately started shouting out all these concerns about her baptism and just flooded us with a whole ton of information that we weren't prepared for. She started expressing concern for why she needed to be baptized again if she has all ready been baptized once and she didn't quite understand Priesthood Authority. So we had to explain that to her and she felt a little more comfortable, but she still wanted to call off the baptism. So, thanks to the spirit, we were able to realize that it didn't matter if she knew everything before her baptism or if she knew exactly why she NEEDED to be baptism again... as long as she knew she needed to be baptized again. (hopefully that made sense) So we invited her to pray about things. And say in her prayer, "heavenly Father I have decided to be baptized on Saturday, is this the right thing for me to do?" And then we invited her to wait and to just feel and listen for her answer. And she said she would. So we scheduled and appointment for the next day and decided that we would either call off the baptism then or go forward with it on Saturday after we met with her on Friday night. So obviously everything was up in the air. We called the Assistants and told them about the situation and asked them what they thought. And they had no idea where her concerns came from. But we all decided that we would fast the next day. And we did so.

So, Friday! We got into the lesson and Hawa says, "did you bring the baptismal record? I am ready to baptized tomorrow." And we were so stoked and things went great and it was awesome. The Lord definitely answered our prayers and hers. And I have such a testimony of fasting! It's an amazing thing!

This week we also found two new investigators. We taught Alex after zone conference. Elder Bagshaw, my district leader in Manchester was able to come along with us. He and his companion were supposed to go on exchanges with the Assistants the next day but had nothing to do Tuesday night so he came along with us. and we got a new investigator with him. It was great!

And then we got another investigator on Sunday named James! James is form Liberia and owns a sweet clothing shop where he makes custom suits and dresses for Liberians. Which is sweet! He has the sickest style. Anyways more about him next week! I love you all and I miss you! Thanks for all your hard work and dedication to the lord. Keep gong and keep praying! I love you all!

Elder Caleb James Wardle