I did not get transferred, but Elder McKenzie did, which was a complete shock. We thought if one of us were to go it definitely would be me. I know President Young is inspired so i am sure Elder McKenzie is needed else where. He got transferred to Coos Bay to follow up train and be a DL. And fun fact now elder McKenzie has served in every single one of my wards, and the only ward he has served in that i haven't is Redmond (eastern Oregon.) pretty crazy and Random! My new companion is Elder Migliori (mig-glory) He is awesome i was really exited when President told me he was going to be my next companion. He is from Minnesota and went to BYU before he came out. And most of you wont know who this is but he looks just like John Alread, who is one of my favorite musicians, but seriously he looks exactly like him.
Transferes went well this week, everyone got to where they needed to be! Before i served here i had no idea how complicated it was to get everyone from where they are to where they are going, there is so much that can go wrong. Luckily everything went smoothly. Yesterday the new missionaries came. I love being at the airport and greeting them. I always give the Elders a big hug and say "welcome to the greatest mission on the earth." I try hard to start a relationship with each new Elder. It is so important that their missions get off to the right start, and as i get to know them its easier to tell how they are doing a few weeks down the road. I love being around new missionaries, they are so exited and full of faith! it reminds me of myself at the start of my mission. What i would give to go back to then. I remember not being able to wait to get to work. The training we did for the new missionaries went very smoothly.
We taught them about how they are meant to be hear, and we had lots of the trainers teach different principles. We also had all the trainers bare their testimony it was very powerful. the main point i tried to get across is that the new missionaries can make a change from day 1. I have seen missionaries who are brand new change areas, it does not matter that they are inexperienced they have a trainer to help them along, if they are truly full of faith and determined to work hard and have success they make huge impacts on their areas and their investigators.
So i need to tell you about a investigator we found last week, and i am actually going to start a few days in the week before last. 2 weeks ago on Friday and on Saturday we had a lot of time to work in our area. We planned the days out really well, and decided we were going to park the car in the middle of our area and visit people from our area book (Former investigators, Less actives, Partmember families...) and talk to everyone we saw. We worked really hard on both days and talked to tons of people, but we saw absolutely no success. Saturday night i pretty depressed, we hardly get time to work in our area and then once we do we plan the best we can and work as hard as we can and found no success.
The next Tuesday we were in our area and we decided to visit a man named Joe he is a single guy about 65 years old. We talked to him outside of his apartment complex when he was out taking a smoke. He did not talk to us much but he said we could come to his apartment anytime and talk to him. We were kind of suspicious because usually when people are like that its cuz they want to bible bash, or just tell us that we are wrong, but we decided we were going to give it a shot. The week before we tried dropping by twice but he was not home. Then on Tuesday when we went by he invited us right in, he actually ended a call he was on as soon as he realized it was us. We were really suspicious and ready to see the wolf come out of the sheep's clothing, but it never did. He is the most sincere man i have ever met. He told us that he has no idea why God has kept him alive, and that he wants to know what his purpose is in this life.
Elder McKenzie and I taught him about our relationship with God, and prayer. We also touched on the plan of salvation. He loved every word we spoke. He said he felt like he never had and that this is what he needed. We taught him about baptism and the promise it is with God, and before we asked him if he would be baptized he said "I would love to that." We taught him how to pray and he said the closing prayer, it was very sincere and powerful. At the end of the lesson we left him with a Plan of Salvation pamphlet and set a appointment for two days latter. When we went back must have read the pamphlet 10 times over because he understood absolutely everything in it, from the pre earth life to the different names of the kingdoms of glory. He held it up and said "what a book!" Before we even taught him more he talked about how he told his kids he was getting baptized and that he had picked the next Sunday as the day he was going to quite smoking, and that was before we taught the Word of Wisdom.
It was such a testimony to me that true faith brings repentance. We did not need to ask Joe to change and repent, he started doing it automatically. We since left him with the book of Mormon and had him read the two accounts of Alma the youngers conversion story, he loved it and said he read it "over and over." Joe is the most prepared man i have ever met. He has a baptismal date set for May 11 and we may need to move it up, because of how fast he is progressing. I could go on for days about Joe but i am dead out of time. I love you all!
Elder Covey
--Fearless Via Faith
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