Monday, February 11, 2019

Another Great Week and the Luray Caverns


Heyyyy all!

How is it going?? It sounds like Evanston WYO is getting wrecked with some snow. Haha there were a few days here on the east coast that were cold.. But there were also some days this week where it was warm enough for me to wear just a white shirt and no coat! So it was pretty nice. Haha

My week has been good! Again it seems like I was just emailing you all yesterday and here we are again emailing on a Monday. Haha but this week was busy.

So this week we had Zone Conference in Winchester Virginia. Recently, President Mutombo has felt the need to set a baptism goal for the year of 2019. The Goal that he received from the Lord is 1000 Baptisms by the end of the year. Now when I heard this was his goal, I about fell off my chair and my jaw hit the floor. Our mission on average baptized around 250-300 converts a year. Which for the east coast is actually pretty good. The east coast doesn't see a whole lot of growth due to all the other religious parties here. Anyways.. The goal of 1000 seemed unreachable to me. While sitting there at Zone Conference, the Stake President of The Winchester VA stake came and spoke with us for a few minutes. While speaking, he too said that when he heard the goal of 1000 he was just blown away. But he said that as he sat there and pondered and pondered on how in the world we as a mission were going to Baptize 1000 converts he couldn't figure it out. He said he kept thinking and thinking. And then all of the sudden the New Testament chapter John 21 flew through his head. He immediately turned there and found this:

First off I love the chapter John 21 because it's the chapter I read that made me come on a mission! Anyways in this chapter, the Apostles were confused on what they should do, because Jesus Christ their master had left them. So they decided to go fishing. While fishing they caught NOTHING. Day and night they fished and caught nothing. The Apostles looked over to the shore and see a man standing there. Here is what happened:

"4 But when the morning was now come, Jesus stood on the shore: but the disciples knew not that it was Jesus.
5 Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered him, No.
6 And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes."

After they had caught all the fish, they got to the shore and counted the amount of fish that they had caught. "Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken."

President Groll, the stake president looks up at us after reading this and says when I read that they had caught 153 fish, I thought harder. Then I realized that if each of the 7 stakes in your mission baptized 153 converts in 2019, your mission will Baptize 1071 people... Ladies and gents I was blown away. President Groll told us that the Apostles fished all day and all night in the same place and found nothing. But then with the help of Jesus Christ they caught so many fish they could not pull the net out of the water. It showed me that we must fish where we have already fished for people. And with the help of Jesus Christ, the harvest will be GREAT. 153 converts per 7 stakes will equal 1071 converts for the year of 2019.

We found one new person to teach this week named Evett! She is super cool and has such a cool story! I will make sure I tell you more about her next week!

One funny thing that happened this week was there is a little button on the steering wheel of our car and when you push it, it pauses the music and changes it to a radio station. We'll whole on a longer drive this week, it was dark out, and right in the middle of the song I paused it and acted like the radio was possessed. My companion Elder Kershaw actually thought it was because he saw no one touch the button.. Hahaha so I played with him for a little bit. We both got a pretty good laugh at the end of it hahaha. He was freaking out!

Anyways, I hope you have a great week! I love and miss you! Thanks for all you do for me.

Love, Elder Welling!










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