Work Picking Up Dramatically; Lord Moves in Mysterious Ways

30 June 2009

Dear Family,

Things are going well here in the Pocatello West Stake. We had a baptism! Kalob High was baptized on 27 June. He is such a cool kid. He is only 10 years old. They had all sorts of family from all over come to his baptism. I even believe he had a great-grandmother there! That is the first baptism of someone I have taught on the mission. (I guess Alexis Zamora actually was, but she was 8 when we taught her and didn't tell anybody she had turned 9 until 1/2 hour before her baptism. I think I wrote you about that.)

Last night we went to say "hi" to one of our investigators and she told us she already had her baptism planned! We have a sheet for the program we help investigators fill out, but this investigator is ahead of the game and excited. It is all planned out to the last detail.

So, there are two sets of missionaries in our district that serve in the Central Stake. One companionship is Elder Walter and Elder Huff. Their area has a large hill that they like to ride down on their bikes really fast. They were going down the hill and a lady opened up her car door! It hit Elder Walter's arm and he crashed and broke his arm.

But this is the miracle. The lady had been taught by missionaries in high school and wanted to be baptized. Her parents wouldn't allow it. But she had been thinking lately that she lived on her own now and could be baptized. So Elder Walter has a broken arm and an investigator who wants to be baptized! The Lord works in mysterious ways!

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"Now Elder Walter has a broken arm

and an investigator

who wants to be baptized!"

---

One thing that I have learned is that the Lord prepares people, and all we have to do is find them. We have two or three people with baptism dates, others who are close, and we are picking up new investigators. Elder Poppleton and I are getting busier and busier. We are consistently teaching at least 10 times a week! Last week we taught 12 times and the week before that we taught 15! (These are formal, "sit down-pray-teach-pray" lessons.) When I first got here we were teaching only two lessons or so a week. We are very excited and hope to teach 20 lessons a week by the end of the transfer.

There is a program from the Missionary Department that wants each companionship teaching 20 lessons a week. That is rare and hard to achieve. But we think we can do it. Especially since Elder Poppleton has been sick the last couple of weeks and we still taught 27 lessons in two weeks!

Well, I don't think anything else too exciting has happened around here. Let me know what is going on back home, please, and how everyone is doing. Thanks.

Love,
Elder Call

Elders Learn the Lord is "in the Details of [their] Lives"

Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught that while the Lord always preserves our agency, He is also involved "in the details of our lives" (“Becoming a Disciple,” Ensign, June 1996, 19). Elders Call and Poppleton discovered this to be true. . .

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24 June 2009

Dear Family,

Again, thank you for the letters this week. It is always good to hear from home about what is going on.

Last Wednesday we lost our phone! Elder Poppleton thinks it is less botherrsome to ask a random person we see in Wal-Mart to give us a ride home rather than calling someone ahead of time and planning to have someone pick us up. I think it is more bothersome to ask someone we don't know, who could live anywhere and who might already have plans. So we compromised and call for a ride from the library to Wal-Mart and then Elder Poppleton asks a random person for a ride home. But that is probably more than you wanted to know. Suffice it to say that we've compromised.

So, after we were done shopping, Elder Poppleton asked for a ride home. The man hesitated, but agreed. His name was Ken and he had stopped to buy some donuts. He was on his way to the Palisades for a Boy Scout camp. He was from a town near Malad (which is outside our mission).

We got home and a little over an hour later we realized the phone wasn't in my pocket anymore! We looked all over the place. We had gone bowling with an older couple, so we called them. It wasn't in their car. We called the bowling alley. They didn't have it. We called Wal-Mart; they didn't have it.

Elder Poppleton asked if I remembered the man's name. "All I remember is that his name was Ken," I said. "I don't know what his last name is." Elder Poppleton remembered seeing that the name on the tent started with an "El." So we looked in the phone book and we found a man who lives in Firth. But that isn't anywhere close to Malad.

Well, to make it short, I found a Ken El--- living in ---, Idaho. We tried calling several times, and eventually we got ahold of him on Friday.

His wife said he was rounding up the cows. So she took the phone out to him (in the meantime, all the cows were mooing). He said they had been in and out of the car a lot, and they hadn't seen it, but he would look. Lo and behold, there it was!

He was coming up to Blackfoot and would be driving right past us, so Saturday morning he heard a semi pulling up and Ken, a typical cowboy, gave us our phone!

That saved a lot of stress and $100. That was definitely an answer to our many prayers.

Love,

Elder Call