Elder Collin DeWitt: WEEK SEVENTY TWO

It was a dark and cold winter night.

The whole house was quiet as the children all finally fell asleep. A small voice came from one of the rooms, calling for mom. She came in where little Anden sat on his bed. "Mom?" he said, "Can you check my room for monsters?" A little annoyed, she checked his room for loose clothing, or objects that could appear to the young eye to be potentially menacing. She turned to him with finality and said, "No monsters in here Anden. Now go to sleep please."

"But what about the strangers?" he said.

"What strangers?" she replied.

"They're big, and have green skin, and red eyes, and no mouth." he said.

"Where do they live?" the mother asked, with more concern.

"On my ceiling." he said, pointing up.

"GOODNIGHT SON!" she said, and ran from the room.

You can thank Sister Webb for that great true story.

This week went well! The weather has been going through an interesting cycle that I've learned is actually really normal: snow at night, melt during day, freeze at night, horrible ice everywhere that melts during the day, night, nice beautiful day, repeat.

We continued to try to make contact with our potential investigators, and we were able to set a few appointments for the coming week. We were supposed to have a lesson with Chelsea yesterday, but she was too busy, so we rescheduled for Saturday. We also scheduled an appointment with a potential investigator named Sheena yesterday, but she also had to cancel. But yesterday STILL wasn't bad, because we were able to meet with Shawna. (Not to be confused with Sheena.)

Shawna is a returning less-active member. She is dating Brent Palmer, who is the brother of a recent convert named Brian. Brent and Brian are both from the FLDS colony. Brian never thought that any of his family members would ever set foot in the chapel, but Brent has been to sacrament meeting for a few weeks in a row now! We're super excited, and we're going to start teaching him when his work schedule clears up. Yesterday we were able to meet with Shawna and some of her kids to share a little lesson. Rather than teaching what we planned, we answered a bunch of AWESOME questions from her kids about baptism, repentance, and the plan of salvation. It was fantastic, and way better than what we had planned. The oldest girl is 10 years old and lives with her dad in Calgary. She wants to learn more and be baptized, so we gave her information over to the sister missionaries there, and that will be awesome!

We also finally met with a potential investigator named Catherine! We brought Brother Banman along with us, which turned out to be perfect since Brother Banman is the greatest member missionary ever. We were planning on teaching the Restoration, but it turned out to be more of a mix of everything. We did end up teaching most of the points of the Restoration though, so that was perfect. She's interested in learning more, and hopefully we'll be able to go by again soon!

We did lots of tracting (as usual) and also tried contacting a lot of less-active members. Two of them said we could come back, which is great! We're hoping we can help them out with their faith, and also ask them who they know that might be interested in learning more about the gospel.

I hope you all loved the first week of the new church schedule! And I hope you were all able to do the first week of the home study! If you didn't get the chance, please do it! I promise that the things you learn will bless you so much. But first, you have to open the book. Three simple steps: Open, Learn, Apply.

I'm so excited about the new "Come, Follow Me" program that I bore my testimony in sacrament meeting about it and the blessings that can come from it. Afterwards, a member came up to me and said something like, "I love how positive you are about this, and pretty much everything. Positive reinforcement and excitement really helps people be more motivated to do things." I thought about that a little bit, and realized (again, for the millionth time) that when we have a positive attitude about things, it tends to rub off on other people. Even if it doesn't rub off, it at least makes the day a little brighter, and keeps pessimistic clouds away.

So, be a little more positive today! Be excited about some new things! It's not a cure-all, but applied in consistent doses, it can change your life.

I love you all! Have the best week ever.

Elder DeWitt