Elder Brian Vawdrey: Seeing the Fruits

Familia y Amigos,

Buenos dias otra vez de aqui en Lexington! It's been a great week for us here and I hope you can say the same about your past week from wherever you are. I hear school starts up here really soon. I can't believe another school year has arrived. So good luck to those of you who are getting ready to go back to school and enjoy the rest of your summer!! But as for here in Lexington, it's starting to get a lot cooler which is really nice. We are hoping that we have a good fall season here this year, but we will see how it goes! haha

This past week, one of my companions, Elder Hugentobler, finished his 2-year mission and returned to his family in Ephraim, UT. It was sad to see him go, but things have been going good here and Elder Terris and I are enjoying our time out here!! This past week was a humbling experience for me when Elder Hugentobler left, and that is how it always goes when there is change. ha But funny story really quick with Elder Hugentobler leaving. Our mission president came to pick him up from our apartment and when we had all of his stuff ready and went to put it all in the car we quickly found out that our mission president locked his keys in the car! haha It was really funny, but I felt bad for him. He spent the next 1.5 hours sticking our metal hangers through his car windows to try to unlock the door but had no luck. Then, he remember that he had "OnStar" and so he called that company and they immediately were able to unlock the car without any cost! haha.. so that was a funny experience. We were glad that everything working out in the end. That's always how it goes if we stay persistent! haha

We found a new investigator this week named O. He is in a part-member family so we are hoping to work with him a lot in the future. He believes the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet. He pretty much knows a lot about the Church but he hasn't quite exercised faith much and said he wants to wait to be baptized. He needs to get married to his girlfriend first before he can move forward and be baptized...but we had a good visit with him and his family this week about how the Gospel Blesses Families and we showed them The Family: A Proclamation to the World! They liked it...but they didn't come to church yesterday so we will stop by their place here again soon.

Then, on Saturday, we saw several miracles. And I want to share a few of them.

First of all, one of the recent converts here, J, is moving to Lincoln to help his mom out... but for just a few weeks. He hasn't been to church for several weeks, but we have stopped by to see him every once in a while. Well, on Saturday morning, we got a knock at our door and it was J. He told us that he is moving to Lincoln and was going to leave right then but he told us that he wanted to postpone his trip until Monday so that he could pass the sacrament at church on Sunday! We were both surprised and way excited for him that he wanted to do that. And he came to church and passed the sacrament and he had a great experience!

And then we went and saw another less-active kid named D. He was baptized several years back but his parents aren't members and church hasn't really ever been a big part of his life. Well, we had a planned lesson for him but once we got there he asked us a bunch of questions and we ended up teaching him something completely different. It was cool to look back and see that, but it was a blast to visit with D about the "why" of the things we do, and the purpose of life. We asked him who he wants to become and he told us that he wants to serve others and do good for other people. He was really open to us and is just a really humble and nice kid! He hadn't been to church for 2 years and he committed to the Lord in the closing prayer to go to church with us yesterday and HE CAME!!! whoot! When he came to church, he said he felt the spirit and that he hadn't been in a long time. It was nice to see many of the members in the ward greet him and make him feel welcome! And it was awesome to see the smile on his face at church. In sacrament meeting, I was surprised that he knew many of the hymns. One of the hymns we sang was "I Stand All Amazed" and when he heard the conductor say we were going to sing this song, he leaned over to me and said: "I love this song!" I just replied, "Me too!" haha but as he said that to me, I could feel his desire to feel greater peace in life and love for the Lord.

And then we also had a zone meeting this week and I learned a lot of stuff at that meeting. The meeting was focused on not getting discouraged and humbling yourself. There was a quote shared that I really like and have heard many times: "Humility isn't thinking less of yourself, it's thinking less about yourself." I can testify that I know thinking less about yourself and more of others is truly what brings great happiness in life. I have seen that a lot this past week. I got a little discouraged after Elder Hugentobler left this week because some of our investigators just dropped out on us. I was getting frustrated thinking that we didn't have many investigators at the moment but I decided to say a prayer for comfort. Right after that was when we went and saw "D" and he committed to come to church! I feel like that was a total answer to prayer and I know that God is watching over us. He loves and cares about us. And he doesn't care about how hard we work or the results that come from our work, but rather he just cares about if we are faithful to Him and constantly striving to do our best!

The Church is true!

I hope you all have another great week! Thanks for your love, support, and great examples!!

Love,

Elder Vawdrey