First off, I hope you all are enjoying your Christmas! We went on a hike today and I guess as an early Christmas present Santa let us see a whale!! That's right. Spurting up water and everything. Pretty cool I'd say. Merry Christmas Elder Gleave.
I guess I'll start off with a really cool experience this week. My comp and I were done with dinner, and we had no appointments, so we decided to street contact all the way to Wal-Mart. Things weren't going too well. No one really wanted to talk, so I was like DANG this sucks. But I was still trying, still being diligent. Then something cool happened. When we were in line to check out at Wal-Mart, some guy came up to me and was like "Hey. My friend is a member of your Church, and she works at 24 Fitness. She was talking me this morning, and I wanted to meet up with you guys and ask you some questions." So we exchanged info, and then parted ways. So after a few phone calls during the week, I invited him to our Christmas party which was Saturday morning. He said that sounded good, and that we'd see him then. On Saturday, he showed up, and I was like "Oh cool! He actually showed up." He was super excited, so he went around and met all the people. He's really good at slack key guitar, so during the party he just got up on stage and started playing and singing Christmas songs! It was awesome. We then thought it would be a good idea to take him on a tour of the church building. When we went into the chapel, you could just feel the spirit. The party was all loud and lots of commotion going on, then in the chapel it was just completely still. I could tell he felt it. He even told me! After talking to him a little while, we went back into the gym and I shared a little bit about the restoration and the priesthood, and he completely understood. After the party, he came up to me with a big smile on his face and he pulled me aside and said, "Just between you and me, I want in. I want to be a part of this Church." I was so excited! So I invited him to be baptized, and he was like "Oh yeah! In 10 weeks though. Not 8. not 9. 10." The bad news is that he's not in my ward boundaries, so we explained that and then he went to the Manoa Ward's (the ward he's in) Christmas party that night! He absolutely loved it. The next day he came to Church, and the same thing, he was so excited. He caught the spark. The Manoa missionaries taught him a lesson yesterday, and committed him to baptism and he said, "Who would say no?" Then they committed him to the 10th of January and he was like "Can I be baptized sooner?" Anyway, just a heart-warming story. He has found the pearl of great price.
We have a really awesome family we are working with. They always feed us on Thursday nights! The Dad is a lawyer, but a goofy, jokester lawyer, and the Mom is completely down to earth. The more and more we talk to him, the more and more he's seeing the Mormon Church is the true Church. They are going on a trip this week to California, and they told us they intend on reading the Book of Mormon cover to cover during that time. That sounds pretty promising yeah? They have 3 kids, the oldest being 13 and the youngest being 7. The Dad is really smart, so it's fun teaching him because he grasps concepts really well. At dinner, we played a make shift jeopardy game with the dad being Alex Trebek and we all chose our own categories. It was really fun!
This week the gospel principles' teacher called me, and asked if I could teach gospel principles 10 minutes before Church started. And it was on the gathering of Israel. There's only so much you can talk about the gathering of Israel, especially with only sacrament meeting to prepare. But the members were nice and rolled with the punches, and participated a lot.
Things are different here in Hawaii. Not too many decorations, so it doesn't really seem like Christmas! The only thing I have to keep the spirit in my heart is replays of Elf scenes in my mind. Sometimes I could just tell investigators, "You gotta keep your promises if you wanna keep your friends." --Turbo Man. I think that's a good way of helping them come to Church.
So I'll email you next week and let you know about skyping, okay? I'll try to get a package for Christmas out today! Well, until next week! I love you all! Pray for Marcus btw, he hurt his knees and they're still swollen a week later.
Much love!
Elder Whale Watcher
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