Blessings Will Come As A Result of Change

Dear family and friends,

This week was amazing! After being here for nearly 7 and a half months Elder Persinger is getting transferred out of Tabor City. We have been companions for about 4 months which is a long time! I have really enjoyed being with Elder Persinger and serving with him in Tabor City. We have seen a lot of great miracles and are starting to get the missionary work in the Tabor City branch up and going. I am not sure who my next companion will be, but I will let you know next week!

This week was great! Brother Warren came thorough town so we got to eat lunch with him. We also got to teach our investigator S-- J--! She has been out of town for a month or so and it was our first lesson since she has been back. It went amazingly well! We just started it off where we left off. We taught her about baptism. She has said in the past that she wants to leave her old church to join ours but she is worried about what her friends and family will say. Our lesson basically consisted of us pumping her up for baptism and helping her see the blessings that would come as a result of that change. When we invited her to church, she was not very sure if she was going to come this week, but we were persistent and she committed to come, and she did! We had one of our members call and invite her to church which was great. When talking to that member, she told us that Smithy had called her Sunday morning before church and said that she couldn't come. Our member didn't take no for an answer and told her that she needed to get out of bed and come to church! It was pretty bold but it worked! We hope to set another day for her baptism here soon!

M-- has been sick all week so we have not seen her. We have talked with her on Facebook but that is about it. She is still doing well and is reading the Book of Mormon consistently.

Church this week was great. We had branch conference! All of the meetings were really great and inspiring. Our priesthood class was particularly amazing and inspired. Brother H-- (a less active member who we have been working with) came to church. He has struggled with a variety of other issues. That just so happened to be what our lesson was about! During class I looked over at him from time to time and he seemed like he was really being uplifted by the lesson! Hopefully he will keep coming back every week!

Another less active member named A-- G-- came to church today. We went and saw her with one of our branch missionaries on Saturday. She told us that she probably wouldn't be able to make it to church because she started work at 11 pm Saturday night until 7:00 am Sunday morning. Again, we didn't take no for an answer and we taught about how living the gospel is a sacrifice. At the end of the lesson she committed to come to church, and she did!

Sunday we had a neat experience. We are really low on miles for the month so we rode our bikes around Tabor City, visiting less active members and talking to everyone we could. We were about to go home when we walked by a REALLY BIG home. From my experience as a missionary, those who have really nice homes, usually do not want to talk to us because they are content with what they already have. We decided to knock anyway. The man answered the door and we had a great conversation with him. He told us that he was not interested in changing religions. We were persistent and asked a few questions about what he felt was God's plan for his family. As we talked he caught interest and invited us in. We taught him the plan of salvation and had a really good discussion. At the end of the lesson, he still was not interested in changing religions but enjoyed talking with us and committed to read the Book of Mormon. His wife during our talk was in the other room playing the guitar, so I asked her about that. She asked if I would like to play hers and I said YES! They had some really nice Taylor guitars which I got to play a few songs on. They actually had heard a lot of the songs by Tommy Emmanuel that I play and were super happy to hear them! Elder Persinger also got to play the piano and sing a little bit. The spirit was very strong. We talked with them for a long time and built a really good relationship with them and they invited us to come back. Hopefully we will be a good influence to them and sometime down the road they will have more interest in the church. Hopefully our common love of music, especially the guitar will be something we can use to bring them into the church.

Thank you for all you do! I love you all so much and really appreciate the support you show to me. Keep on living the gospel! It really is the way to happiness. Thank you for the updates from back home. It is crazy to see how time has flown by. I never thought I'd ever only have one more transfer left. Thankfully, God has blessed me with the same desire to work that I've had my whole mission. I intend to continue working harder until the end.

Love Elder Mortensen

 

Our district!

 

Sisters: Bartholemew and Taylor, Elders: Mortensen, Persinger, Allen and Cluff.

 

The best district ever!