God Is More Able To Communicate To Us During Our Studies If We Have A Question That We Are Seeking Out

Hello everyone,

Another great week here in Tabor City! We are still having a lot of success and both Elder Persinger and I love the people here in Tabor City.

Our district meeting went very well! President and Sister Bernhisel came and it turned out really well. As with all good things, it didn't happen without any opposition. I had everything planned out and I was really confident that the meeting would be very uplifting. The morning of, one of the companionship's called and said that they were not going to be able to make it because they were feeling really sick. This was the same companionship that I had assigned to teach a fairly significant part of the district meeting lesson. Naturally, I immediately started trying to figure what we would do in place of that time. Everything ended up going great though. The district participated a lot and I ended up teaching the whole time during district meeting. It went really well! I taught a few principles that would help them have more productive personal and companionship studies. I think at the end everyone had a greater understanding of how our studies help us fulfill our purpose as missionaries. A few of the principles that I taught were to always study with a question. If you look at some of the great events in church history such as the First Vision of Joseph Smith, the restoration of the Priesthood etc... all of those events were triggered by a question. God is more able to communicate to us during our studies if we have a question that we are seeking out.

Our exchange with President Bernhisel went really well! Sister Bernhisel did not go with us because she went on exchange with the Sisters in the district. We had a lesson with a less active member Sister L--. She has gone through a lot of trials and it has shaken her faith tremendously. She is a great person but finds herself doubting the existence of God. Her two God-daughters were there ( they are not members). During the lesson it seems as if they were all a little antagonistic toward us and the message we were trying to share with them. After all was said and done, there was a great spirit felt by all at the end of the lesson. They softened up and seemed happier as a result of our visit. It was great teaching with President Bernhisel. I felt like our teaching was really unified despite this being only the second time I've ever taught with him. It was great!

After that lesson we ended the exchange. President gave Elder Persinger and me some good complements about our missionary work and the district meeting. What a great man.

The rest of the week went well. R-- is struggling a little bit. His life situation is very difficult to explain and would probably take a few pages for me to describe what he is going through. I'd just ask y'all to pray for him that he will have the spirit to influence his choices.

Everyone else is doing great! S-- came to church again! She loves it and said that she wants to keep coming every week she can! She has really progressed a lot. We are going to be setting a day for her baptism hopefully this week!

Everything else is going well here. We teach a lot of less active members. We are seeing some progress with them, but would like to see more. It seems to boost the branch members trust in us when they see that we are putting a lot of effort into the re-activation effort. They feel that missionaries in the past have baptized people before they were ready, because almost all of the converts baptized within the past year are now less active. We hope to help them see that we are here to truly build up the branch.

Thank you for sharing those stories about what you learned at that conference. That story is quite remarkable. It is amazing to see how much we can impact someones life. The thing about that is that we oftentimes have no idea the impact we make. There truly is no greater joy that that which comes from serving others.

Thank you for all that you do. I hope you have a great week. I feel your prayers. I definitely need them. I also hope you feel my prayers for y'all.

Love Elder Mortensen