(20 October 2008)

Dear Family and Friends, (20 October 2008)

We taught the Pretorius Family this week. It was mainly just Andre though. We read the Book of Mormon with him, Mosiah 5. He agreed with everything we read. We also read some verses that President Poulsen suggested we should share such as Ether 4:11-12, Omni 1:25, and John 14:26-27. We shared these verses to show him that that which is good is from God. President also suggested we ask him to go to the church for information about the church rather than to an outside source. We gave him the church's websites to look go to. Andre is still a little skeptical but he agreed to having us come each week to read the Book of Mormon with him.
On Saturday we had a fireside. WE had an alright turn out. The Stake President, Branch President, one of his councilors, and their wives and some others came. We played Jeopardy based on the scriptures, and Preach My Gospel. They didn't know some of the answers which gave us the opportunity to teach them a little about missionary work. It seemed like a really good idea and way to help the branch understand missionary work it's just that not a lot of people came and even some of those who did come got a little side tracted while we were playing.
This is the second week in a row that Sister Kirchmann, our part-member family on date, has missed church. I decided that I would start calling her each Sunday she wasn't at church to show her that we care and that we miss her. Hopefully this will help motivate her to come. Calling her will hopefully cause to bring to her mind why she didn't come, and she'll see that the excuses really don't justify her. On the upside though this is the second week in a row that Heather Wood has come to church. She is the lady that volunteers at Broken Wings. Heather's car wasn't working so we got the Ashmores, an elderly couple to give her a ride to church. Heather is also elderly so I'm sure they had some things in common to talk about.
This week for District meeting we read, and talked about chapter 5 in Preach My Gospel. It is on the Book of Mormon. This along with a couple of lessons we've had this week have really helped me to understand the Book of Mormon's power in the conversion process. We taught Ralph again this week. We haven't seen him in a while. He was a little concerned that we maybe revered Joseph Smith too much. I helped him see that he is only important because he is a prophet of God. We did a little catching up with Ralph and then left him a lesson 2 pamphlet committed him to read that and then also gave him 2 Nephi 2 to read. We see him Wednesday, and he said he will read those things by then so we can discuss them.

Elder Lane