"The land of entrapment, come on vacation and can't leave on probation"

Hello there!

Sounds like ya'll are doing fine and dandy. Thank you for watching the tennis in my honor. Of course Djokovich ruined the fun for everybody again. Also, that's way sweet that Levi made the tennis team for Whitworth. What a guy! I don't know how the kid does it but he just beats everybody somehow and it doesn't make any sense. Levi is the man, I was infuriated everytime he beat me because I always thought I should be able to beat him. Let him know I'm pumped for him! That's sweet that Maren is going on a mission too. She'll love it and do a great job. All the sister missionaries I have met are way good and they just seem to have the spirit stronger with them than Elders. They do a bossome job. Maren will too.

So this week was a good week just like last week and we found some more investigators who are totally prepared by the Lord. They were super easy to find too. There were a few disappointments this week but that's nothing unusual. There are disappointments almost everyday with missionary life. One of the disappointments is that Cowboy told us to stop coming and reading with Malachi. He told us that they need to fix some family issues and that they need the time to resolve all of their issues and whatnot. We told him that the things we have been teaching them would help them with their problems more than anything else but he still doesn't want us to come by for a while. That was a bummer. Basically Cowboy's situation right now is that he wasn't his probation stuff with his probation officer so he's either going to jail today or he is running away up to Colorado and living life on the edge even more than he is right now. It's pretty sad and we tried to help him get his life on the right track but he just kept getting into trouble. But who knows if he'll even go to jail or run away because like 5% of the things Cowboy says actually happen. But he said some funny things to us. New Mexico is known as the land of Entrapment to some people and he said that he came here in vaction and he can't leave because he's on probation. That was one of the funniest things I've heard Cowboy say. Anyway, we also weren't able to meet with Tina this week. She kept having family emergencies going on and we kept pushing appointments back and we're hopefully going to be meeting with her tonight. She didn't come to church either. Nobody made it this week =( Shariy's appointment with Bishop apparently went well but we talked about marriage with her again and she said that that isn't what they are focused on right now. She says that Geno needs to focus on healing and they don't need to think about marriage much right now. I was super bummed when I heard her say that. Hopefully a miracle will happen and her and Geno's eyes will be opened and their hearts will be softened. But those are the disappointments for the week!

The awesome things that happened this week mainly came through finding our 2 new investigators which like I said wasn't too difficult to find them. One of them was that part-member family I think I talked about before. Their names are Casey and Meghan, Casey is the member and he is way awesome. He grew up in an active family and somewhere along the lines just kinda fell off and got into some of the worldly things. Meghan comes from a family where she was asked to go to do a dance with an LDS boy in school and her mom wouldn't let her so her family is basically way anti-Mormon. Anyway, we were able to go over to their home (which is like 100 yards away from our apartment) and teach Meghan about the Restoration. Casey had to leave early and we just continued to teach Meghan with the member we brought with us. She was just way open to everything and she talked about how she and Casey need to both love God more than eachother so that they can have a happier marriage. So we talked about exactly how she can show her love for God and her willingness to do what He asks of us and that is by being baptized by someone who holds the Priesthood. We invited her to be baptized and she said that she would as soon as she knows if the BoM is true and Joseph Smith was a prophet. It was awesome. One of our standards of excellence is to invite all investigators to be baptized on the 1st lesson and with a baptismal date no later than the 2nd lesson and sometimes it's scary to invite them to make that commitment because you don't know how they will react. It takes some faith but it's worth it. That's kind of how that was with her. I was super nervous to ask her to be baptized and I've done it a bunch of times with other people but for some reason I was just more nervous this time but I took a leap of faith and it went great! All that really needs to happen for them is for Meghan to get a new work schedule because she works on Sundays. Once that happens things will really pick up with them! I was super excited about them. That was probably my most exciting moment of the week.

The other new investigator that we found is a woman named Paige who happens to live in the apartment next door to ours. She moved in in November or sometime close to that and we talked to her like once or twice. One day we were heading out for the day on our steeds and she was outside walking to her car and we just thought that we should talk to her so we did and we set up an appointment to meet with her later in the week. Paige goes to this way big church that everybody goes to around here called Sagebrush. Just so ya'll know, everyone in Rio Rancho is either Catholic, Jehovah Witness, or goes to Sagebrush. Anyway, she joined that church and was baptized into it like 2 or so years ago but she has grown less and less fond of it as time has passed. She said that people just seem judgmental and stuff and it's changed since she first joined. She is a super smart woman too. We taught her the Restoration and talked about how important it is to have a living day prophet and the Priesthood authority on the Earth. A lot of people don't understand those things no matter how clearly or simply you explain it. It just all made sense to her and at certain points as we talked about this message she was just get a big old grin on her face and I just knew she was feeling the spirit even if she didn't know it. We invited her to read and pray about the BoM and to be baptized on February 23rd and she accepted all of those things. It was great! The only thing she didn't want to do at least for right now is to come to church. That's a pretty important thing. She said she wasn't ready for that yet but I know that she will get there through her faith.

This week, we were teaching a woman named Melissa and she asked us "what makes your prophet and your church different from other churches that claim to have prophets and be the true church?" There are so many differences. Through Joseph Smith the Priesthood is once again on the earth and we can be sealed as eternal families. We also have the gift of the holy ghost to lead and guide us to comfort us. It also testifies to us of truth. The prophet Thomas Monson receives revelation directly from God for our benefit. I know that all these things are true without a doubt in my mind because I have kneeled and asked God if this is the truth more than once. It took a while to get my answer but I got it and it has changed me. The elders quorum president in our ward (who is a boss) said that the biggest difference with our church and others is that we don't want or ask anybody to take our word for it. Take your questions to God and he will answer you. Go experience this great thing that we have experienced for ourselves. These things are true and have the power to change anybody's life and I know it's all true!

Peace and love ya'll!
Elder Black