WEM Again

Dear Family and Friends,

Some of our numbers waned a bit this week, regardless of our efforts to keep them up. I guess it was just one of those weeks.

The good news is, we have a baptism planned for this weekend! Darlene is still excited for her baptism on Saturday and confirmation on Sunday. Her husband, Everet is going to perform the baptism and their fellowshipper, Brother Glade will perform the confirmation. I am amazed at the dedication to the Gospel that Darlene has shown. Without even needing an invitation, she and her husband have started a Gospel study together every night for an hour. She is truly putting forth the effort to prepare and develop a lasting relationship with our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. She even bought a temple dress already :)

We had another great lesson with Bennett and Verna Harris this week and taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ and re-invited them to be baptized. They both answered with "most likely, yes." But not a definite answer. They both expressed that they would like to learn more of what is required of them before they make an firm decision. Unfortunately, they did not show up at church yesterday. In our ward council meeting, everyone that had met Bennet last week kept saying how excited they were about the prospect of him joining the ward. They loved him! Now we just need to figure out how the ward can let him know better that they think the world of him.

I think we will probably have to drop Tiffany. It is sad because she is one of only a few investigators keeping all her commitments, but we feel that she may just like the company and wants to please us so we will keep coming. And possibly, that she is meeting with us to get attention from her family that she is doing something out of the ordinary or shocking. She also expressed that she has no desire to get baptized but she wants to just learn. So, I guess we will give it one or two more tries and then make a decision from there.

We have one new investigator that has shown some great promise. His name is Brandon Roy and he is 12. He has been participating in our ward's Scout troop for the last year. He attended the Aaronic Priesthood Encampment at Fire Mountain a few weeks ago (it was an eight stake event with over 1100 Scouts there!), and he was the first member of our ward's troop to get the Ammon Award. It was a special award that required learning about the Book of Mormon, attending Priesthood workshops, etc. He also got his hair cut by Elder Christensen of the Seventy. While he was there, he asked our Zone Leaders (Elders Rencher and Moncur) if they could come teach him more about the Book of Mormon. They referred us to him and we had our first lesson on Thursday afternoon. We taught the Restoration and he said that he has had feelings of confusion about religion similar to Joseph Smith and we invited him to continue to read and pray about the Book of Mormon and promised him that God would reveal the truthfulness of the Gospel to him. We also extended a soft invitation of baptism to him and he said, "yes." We still need to talk with his mom some more before we set a date. She is not interested (she is Wican, too...) but she is supportive. I absolutely LOVE teaching kids between 11-15ish. They are just starting to become more aware and searching for truth. And for the most part they will listen to you openly. And because of those qualities, it is so much easier for those kids to feel the Spirit and gain a knowledge of the truth. In fact, we were doing some contacting down and the beach near our apartment and everyone that accepted the invitation to read the Book of Mormon and meet again with us was under the age of 20.

In my study this week I read Alma twelve (Lari) and I really appreciated the end of verse fifteen. It says, speaking our Savior, "he hath power to save every man that believeth on his name and bringeth forth fruit meet for repentance." This is a true principle. The Atonement makes it possible to be saved, but it does not take away our personal responsibility. Action is required to be able to use the Atonement to it's fullest capacity. There is not just an easy out to be redeemed of our sins. We have to really want it, even to the giving up of our favorite or most convenient sins. We have to want redemption more.

Well, the transfer is drawing to a close and there are between 19-21 new sisters coming in to the mission. So, more than likely my time in Oak Harbor is also drawing to a close. But we will see, the Lord moves in mysterious ways...

Hope you are all doing well! Love ya!
Sister Turley

PS--I got pics with Elder Bloomfield at Zone Conference! My favorite is the picture with the thumbs up. We have both started doing that a lot since being on a mission (couldn't tell ya why). We must be cousins.