08.20.2011 "First Full Week With Elder Griffiths" (posted by Rebecca)

Hello Everyone!

This week has been pretty busy, and things are going well. As I am pretty short on computer time today, like always.  So I decided to include a part of the this week's weekly email that I send to President Hess.

"This week has been interesting. The work here is definitely continuing to progress, but we weren't able to teach quite as many lessons this week as we had hoped. Around 3/4 or so of the appointments that we had this week eneded up falling through or canceling on us. Most of our progressing investigators were either sick this week or busy for one reason or another, and it's been difficult to meet with them lately.

Still, we can see the blessings of the Lord in all of this. One instance on Thursday particularly sticks out to me. We had had eight appointments scheduled that day, and one by one, every single one of them fell through. We were disapointed, but we still kept working throughout the day and had a little time to go finding later in the evening before we headed home for the night. We decided on a street to door knock and began working our way down the road. For some reason it seeemed like very few people were home, and we weren't having much success. As we got to the corner of an intersecting road, we knocked on the door of a family who was in the middle of dinner. The father of the family told us, not too politely, to come back later. As we rounded the corner and walked past the other side of the house, suddenly a door opened on the lower level and a man walked out and called out to us, "Hey, are you Mormons? Do you have any pamphlets?" We started talking to him and found out that he had many relatives who were LDS, including a cousin on a mission and another relative who was a high priest. He told us that he had been "blessed a Mormon, but raised Pentacostal" by his mother. We gave him a few pamphets and he told us he would read them. We then asked him if we could come by sometime next week and teach him some more about what those pamphlets taught. He enthusiasticly agreed and then told us that he might even throw a couple steaks on the grill too. He wasn't sure exactly when would work, but he gave us his number before we left and asked us to give him a call this Sunday so we could work something out. He was very friendly and seems genuinely very interested in learning more about the gospel, and we're very excited to meet with him again. It was an amazing blessing right at the end of a hard day. I don't think that anyone else on that whole street talked to us that night, but I know that the Lord blessed us and lead us to door knock that particular street on the 18th. It turns out that the lower level of that house is a different apartment altogether. It isn't very apparent though, and there is nothing to make it look like that door wasn't just part of the rest of the house. We never would have knocked that door if he hadn't seen us walking down the street and came out to meet us. There are many miracles in this work."

It is truly a great blessing to be in the full time service of the Lord. I testify, as I have before, that this is His work, and He is in it. I know He always keeps his promises and fufills in full measure everything he tells us. I also have faith that as He uses me as a tool to bless the lives of others here and to help them come closer to Him, he also helps me to learn and to grow and become more the man that he wants me to be for the remainder of my life. I believe the experiences I go through help to prepare me for callings I will have later.

I am glad that things are going well at home and it is good to hear what everyone is up to. I promise that soon I will find the time to write back to everyone, and I'm sorry that it's taken so long.  I love you all!

Love,

Elder Trevor Casper