"Do Or Do Not, There Is No Try" --Yoda

Dear family and friends,
 

It was another great week here in Hope Mills! We saw a lot of great things happen in our area and also in our zone. I mentioned last week that we were going to be going out with President Bernhisel to teach this week. We had a Zone Leader Training Meeting this past Wednesday with all of the missionaries in our zone. President and Sister Bernhisel were there along with our 16 companionship's of missionaries and 1 companionship of senior missionaries. We have a huge zone, so it is really great to see them all in one meeting. The focus of the meeting was how we could teach more effectively. It went really well and we hope that we start to see the results of our missionaries teaching more effectively.

After the meeting President Bernhisel took Elder Green and me out to eat and then to our lesson with Sister V--. We taught the lesson in our ward mission leaders home so it was a really good lesson. We taught her the Word of Wisdom. It was a really spiritual lesson with a lot of participation from the Bernhisel's and the E-- family. When we invited her to live the Word of Wisdom she said that she would try. We did not stop there, we helped her to exercise her faith to where she said that she would DO it. We used the quote from Yoda, "Do or do not, there is no try". The reason I share that is because she had a neat experience the next day. She said that she was at a gas station and she really really wanted a cigarette. While she was struggling to determine if she would smoke or not, a car pulled up right next to her at the gas station. On the side of the car was a picture of Yoda and the quote "do or do not, there is no try" printed next to it. She took that as a sign from God that she is doing the right thing to quit smoking. It has been a truly amazing experience working with sister V--. She started out an atheist but is slowly gaining faith in Jesus Christ. We also taught her in another members home about how she can recognize the spirit. She really wanted to pay close attention to how she felt as she read the Book of Mormon that week. Just yesterday she texted us about an experience where she felt peace and joy from reading the Book of Mormon. She is doing really well!

Elder Green is great. He is a really good missionary and is a lot of fun to serve with. He is from Birmingham Alabama and has been out on his mission about 18 months. I am learning a lot from him every day.

Thanks again for the news from back home. Happy late birthday Ali! I hope you had a wonderful day. I bet your trip up to the cabin soon is going to be a lot of fun! Thanks for all of your love and support. I do appreciate your prayers and everything else you do for me. I hope y'all have a great week:)
 

Love Elder Mortensen