Serving A Mission Has Changed My Life. I Feel As If I Have Discovered Who I Am, Along With Building A Relationship With Christ.

Hello family and friends,

We had a superb week this week! We have been really blessed by the Lord with all of the success we have seen. Our investigator M-- that we found last week is doing extremely well! She told us that she just can't seem to put the Book of Mormon down and that she loves what she is learning from it. She told us that for many years, she felt as if there was a big hole in her life. She tried her best to find something that would fill that hole. She told us that everything that we have shared with here is filling the hole in her life! She says that after many years of feeling God was not in her home, she feels as if He is now. In our lesson's this week she bore a strong testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith's prophetic call. She even shared two copies of the Book of Mormon and a few pamphlets with a few of her friends!! She is elect and is going to be a great member of the church! We found her through a less active member named C--. He is good friends with M--. We had our Relief Society President with us at a lesson with her this past week. She was baffled that we were able to find her, because she lives in the middle of the woods! God's hand has been clearly visible in her life, and in us finding her to teach!

Everything else here is going well. Elder Persinger and I sang a duet in sacrament meeting this week. We sang "We'll bring the world His truth." It went really well. We had a lot of people after Sacrament meeting come up and thank us for singing.

In our mission there is a big push for every companionship to teach 20 lessons every week. Our district struggles with reaching that goal. As I was contemplating on how we could reach that goal, an idea came to my mind. I thought of children, when their parents tell them they have to do their chores before they can do what they want to do. That same technique works with missionaries as well! Something that almost every missionary loves to do is eat! Not only do they get to eat good food, but they get a few minutes to take a break from the work and recover a little bit. A goal that we set is that we will not eat lunch or dinner, until we reach our goal of teaching one or two lessons. As Elder Persinger and I have applied this we found that we were more motivated to get out and talk with everyone so we can not only help them come unto Christ, but so we can eat! Don't worry, we will not go without food, because we WILL find someone to teach.

I got to go on exchange with Elder Edman this week. It was great! We had a good time talking about the days when we served together in Wilmington (that was a long time ago)! He is a great missionary and has grown a lot since I last served with him.

Things seem to be going well back home! I told Bri that I am super excited that she is going to go on a mission! She will be a wonderful missionary. Serving a mission has changed my life. I feel as if I have discovered who I am, along with building a relationship with Christ. To be honest, I don't know how my life would be if I didn't serve a mission. I feel like I would live forever not really understanding who I am and my relationship to God. It really is true in the scriptures when it says if you loose yourself in the service of God, you truly find yourself. Thank you for keeping me updated on what is going on back home. I hope Everything else continues to go well. I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Love Elder Mortensen