(6 October 2008)

Dear Family and Friends, (6 October 2008)

I must say that General Conference has been a great joy to me. I have definitely appreciated the Prophets and Apostles more now that I’m out here serving the Lord. I loved all of the talks. Some of which I particularly felt gave me direct guidance were President Uchtdorf’s talk on Lifting Where You Stand, and Elder Robert D. Hales’ talk on Christian Courage in our conversations with others.
We had quite an interesting visit with the Pretorius family. Our last visit before this one was great we bore powerful testimony and I felt the spirit. They accepted the challenge to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. This visit, however, was different. Andres, the father, got a hold of some anti-mormon literature. He doesn’t have anything against the Book of Mormon but he’s not sure about Joseph Smith. I brought a little contention there and realized my emotions were getting a little out of hand so I decided to just be quiet and let Elder Burnett do all the talking. We tried bearing testimony but Andres kept firing back with “How do you know it wasn’t the Devil?” At that time we were not able to explain things very well. You know the saying; if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all? Well on the bike ride home I thought about our visit and that saying. I felt bad for allowing Satan to shut me. I was afraid I would make things worse if I spoke. What I should have done was prayed for the strength and the ability to make these feelings leave that way I could effectively teach and testify. It’s not enough to just be quiet, we must not just stop saying bad things but cleanse are feelings within. If you can’t say anything nice, pray to Heavenly Father so you can say something nice. Conference certainly gave me some guidance for next time. During Zone Conference as Elder Anderson, one of the APs, was giving his talk I was impressed that we should go back to the Pretorius family and just read the Book of Mormon with them. I have hope that this is not the end of the Pretorius family’s progression to eternal life.
Last Monday evening while we were tracting we came to a call box. When I rang it the lady at the other end, Chantelle, (not sure if her name is spelled correctly) said her husband wasn’t home and that she doesn’t usually let people in. I asked her if we could set an appointment to come back, and she accepted! She even offered to cook us dinner. We went to her home Wednesday evening and she invited her friend and her friend’s daughter to join us, they were there when we got there. Things went very smoothly. Her husband greeted us at the door we sat down and ate, and had some good conversation. As we were speaking at the dinner table I asked her what made her accept our invitation. She wasn’t sure why she accepted, but she was praying hard that the Lord would not let anything bad come into her home. If we had not made our appointment she would have thought that angels led the evil, us, away. We taught Lesson 1 up to the Great Apostasy. Chantelle showed great interest in knowing which church is true and how to find out which one it is. She said that she loves her church, but she is open to hearing the word of God. Our next appointment is a braai on the 11th. We will finish lesson 1 with them, her friend, Amanda will also be there again as well. I love this work.

Elder Lane