December 5, 2017
Hello Y'all!
So my third week here is up and I only have 6 more days here until I leave for Kentucky at 3:50 AM on Monday morning! This week has been my favorite of the whole 3 weeks I've been here! It snowed here which was pretty awesome and Utah has some pretty dang good sunsets! My first fast Sunday here wasn't really that bad! There are just so many meetings to go to on Sunday that eating wasn't really that important. Yes we were still hungry and we definitely appreciated being able to eat as much food for dinner as we wanted, but it was nice to fast, considering I've already gained like 15 pounds here because of all of the good food here!! I've grown so much spiritually and I've really come to know of the greatness, importance, and "deliciousness" of the Book of Mormon! We had a lot of study time and so I would just read the Book of Mormon for hours a week and mark a bunch of scriptures that were personally inspiring and helped me gain a better appreciation and understanding of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and his unfailing love that he and Heavenly Father have for each and every single one of us! As we were teaching our TRC investigator Alex this week, we felt a semblance of the love that God has for us and it was the most amazing feeling ever to see him progress! We taught him about the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity and he prays and reads the Book of Mormon and it's so amazing to watch him come closer to God. Sometimes we teach our teachers here who are pretending to be progressing investigators and so we taught Myles which was really brother Allred and we invited him to be baptized and he said yes! We talked to him afterwards for feedback and he asked us if we study PMG and when we told him no, (oops), he was surprised because he said we were pretty much quoting it. The Spirit really allows the investigator to feel what is right and true if the Spirit is with you, which was really cool! We're having another General Authority speak to us tonight so hopefully that's cool! I love you all and I hope that you are all doing well!
Love,
Elder Stephen Ray
(One of my teachers which I will send a picture of is specifically talked about in the talk "Behold Thy Mother" by Elder Holland and it's super cool! He's my favorite teacher and has so much love and knowledge to share with all of us because he has definitely gone through some very difficult things in his life! I'd recommend watching the talk, it's really good!)
Stephen Picture
And thus we see that the commandments of God must be fulfilled. And if it so be that the children of men keep the commandments of God he doth
nourish them, and strengthen them, and provide means whereby they can accomplish the thing which he has commanded them; 1 Nephi 17:3