July 10, 2017 Next Door Neighbor

7-10-2017
Hey everyone!

At the mission office. We're usually only here a couple times
a week, but we enjoy our time there, getting things done
and seeing the senior couples that are there every day.

It's been another good week! I hope you all had a great 4th of July week! President Huntsman invited Elder Ure and I to have dinner at his home on the fourth with him and his family, so that was pretty fun!

This picture was taken on 7/6/17, our 18 month mark!
We were all at the mission leadership conference that was held this week
and happened to be on our 18 month mark.
Elder Norton, Elder Meldrum, Elder Jones, and I were all in the MTC
 together 18 months ago! I can't believe it's been that long.

My MTC group and I hit our 18 month mark this week, which is crazy! That means that the sister missionaries that started at the same time as us go home in about 2 weeks at the end of this transfer. That's a weird feeling.

This is Edith, one of our investigators from Ghana.
We taught her on the 4th of July,
which also happens to be her birthday!

This week was full of great experiences with different people that we've been working with.

We had a cool experience finding this lady named Gifty. We met someone else that lived at her house on the street a couple weeks ago, and we were trying to see him when we knocked on her door. Instead, Gifty opened the door and immediately invited us inside. She then told us her background, and connections to the church. She is from Ghana, and has lived in multiple places throughout the world in her life, and no matter where she goes, she always ends up making some connection with the church, whether it be an extended family member, a coworker, neighbor, or friend. She has interacted with members of the church throughout her life. She was in Salt Lake City a few weeks ago on a business trip, and went to Temple Square. She had a good conversation with two sister missionaries, who tried to get her address and phone number so that missionaries can come to her home. But Gifty refused to give it to them and told them "When the time is right, I have confidence that God will send them to my home again." And then told them about how she's always ended up meeting members of the church, no matter where she goes. And sure enough, a couple weeks later, we ended up knocking on her door! No coincidence there. Anyways, she was first given a Book of Mormon when she was 11 years but never opened it up, because she had some concerns and misconceptions, but never bothered to ask anyone more about it. So when we taught her, we were able to have a great first discussion, helping her truly understand everything. She had so many misconceptions about the church that we were able to clear up. Once she actually understood what the Book of Mormon was about, and what it's purpose is, she started to get emotional. She started to express regret to us, because she has had one for so long but has bothered to open it up and read it. But now that she understands it better, she's excited to start reading! It was a really cool experience teaching her and were excited to see her again tonight!

Also, if you remember a little over a month ago we were teaching a lady named Isatu, but she went to Sierra Leone for a month. She's back now and we're teaching her again! We emailed her while she was gone and she said it meant a lot to her knowing that we were thinking about her from thousands of miles away.  Her cousin is a member of the ward who was baptized last year, so she's doing a good job fellowshipping her.

This is our investigator Peter Kamara, from Sierra Leone.
This was right before we left his apartment to go to church!
He was super happy to come!

A few weeks back I wrote about one of our investigators, Peter, who we found. Well he's was in the hospital for a couple weeks, but is back home now. We had a couple good lessons with him this week and he came to church with us on Sunday! While in Elders quorum, the lesson was on the importance of families, and Peter participated by bearing his testimony on families. He talked about how he never actually knew his birth parents, but different people came into his life and became his family. He got pretty emotional, but it was powerful, and he really seemed to feel comforted and loved by everybody at church yesterday.

We had a cool experience meeting with our next door neighbor, Kadiatu, who is from Sierra Leone. She has lived next door to the missionaries for a year now, and has seen us come and go many times, but somehow the missionaries have never talked to her before. We gave her our card a few weeks ago and told her to let us know if she ever needs help with anything. We got a phone call from her last week and she left a voicemail that said she wanted us to come over and pray with her and that she wanted to come to church with us. Obviously we were super excited, thinking that she would be pretty solid! So we went the next morning with a member of our ward to go teach her, but after just a few minutes in her apartment, we find out that she was actually baptized a member of our church in the early 90's, but hasn't been in a long time. I was surprised that she's lived next door to the missionaries for a whole year, and they never found out that the next door neighbor Kadiatu is actually a member! Her records for some reason haven't been in the ward, but we're going to find them. We've had a couple good visits with her since we met, and she came to church yesterday for the first time in about 20 years! Pretty neat that we were able to get our next door neighbor to come to church!

Here's a sweet scripture I came across this week. D&C 25:10 ​"And verily I say unto thee that thou shalt lay aside the ​​​things​ of this ​​​world​, and ​​​seek​ for the things of a ​​​better​."

Hope you all have a great week! Love you all!

Elder Jeremy Duvall
Washington DC South Mission

This is the Boakye family! Sarah is the mother of the family
and was baptized many years ago, but none of her kids are members,
and she has allowed us to start teaching her crazy kids.
Sarah is the one who doesn't look happy in this picture, but she's actually
a pretty happy person. Her house is always crazy though!

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