Mission Update 1/20/10

Here's the weekly update! Sounds like all is well.


Hello Family,

Thank you for your emails. It is very good to hear from you. I'm glad things are going well. I'm very happy to hear how well you are doing with your Book of Mormon reading! A chapter a day keeps temptation away (that just came to my mind right now... It's not completely true, but the promptings of the Spirit we receive as we read our scriptures daily certainly help us to make the right choices!)!

Well, things have been pretty crazy here lately. Things are going well though. The Lord has really been blessing Elder Boyer and I in our service here. We've got a great Ward, and a lot of good things going for us. The Zone has been doing well too!

Here's some of what we did this week:

Wednesday night we went over to the Coopers home for dinner with Brother Cooper, Brother Adams and Mike C. It was pretty great. We're going there tonight for dinner too, which should be good.

Thursday was a good day. We had the Hesed House, which went well. After that, we went to teach Alex Gamboa how to teach missionary lessons. After that, we went out and took him with us to teach at Maple Terrace. He did well helping us teach Lorenszo and Chiquita. After this, we went over to Naper 6 to do baptismal interviews. I interviewed a mother, and Elder Boyer interviewed her son. The family got baptized, and is doing well! After this, we went tracting and found a new investigator! After this, we ate some dinner. We had a bad week... We had a day or two without a dinner appointment. The Ward fixed that problem on Sunday though, and filled out every single day on the dinner calendar for the rest of the month, and a good chunk of next month. We have a great Ward. Anyways, Thursday evening we went to visit Amanda. She's a great lady that is coming back to Church. She lived in Arizona right next to Joe's Crab Shack and Sweet Tomatoes! We taught her with Brother Stavron, and she's doing well.

Friday was a pretty good day. We taught Amanda again. She has read some of her Book of Mormon, and wants to move forwards. We are excited to see her progress. We had some fall through during the day for appointments. Actually, quite a bit. It was fine though. We had some good time to tract, and found a new investigator again. We also got to visit the Christensens and Nancy's family. The day was overall pretty good. Our dinner appointment got ill, so we went to a place called Noodles for dinner. The cashier had studied the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in her sociology class, and was excited to meet mormon missionaries.

Saturday was a crazy day. We had MCM in the morning. It went well. Mike was not doing well, so we took him out with us to get into a spiritual environment. We taught Adam and Nancy. That went well. We discussed Christlike attributes and improving ourselves through Christ. We then went to visit Brother Adams, and had a mini testimony meeting there with him. We then went to a baptism, which was nice. It went well. After this, we did some stop bys. We visited with Krista and Jessica's mother for a bit. They're out of town, so we wont teach them for a week and a half or so. They're doing well though.

Sunday went well. We had our studies and Church. We also had our weekly planning session. We went to the Lees for dinner, which was great. They're both RMs and are excited for missionary work. We're going back there to help them come up with plans for people on their focus list for sharing the Gospel. They gave us one referral, which I'll tell you more about later (it's great)! We also went over to teach Sebastian about prayer and the Book of Mormon. He's doing well, and we hope to begin teaching his whole family soon. We were going to stop by a man we tracted into's home, and were right outside his house. We said a prayer for guidance, and got told not to go in. We prayed for more guidance, and we were impressed to visit a less active family named the Elizaldis. We went over there, and met the family. The mother wasn't home, but they are very open for us to begin teaching them. It's a huge part member family, and they're very nice. We're pretty excited for that, and are very grateful the Lord led us over there to visit them.

Monday was a good day. We had a meeting with a woman we had contacted in our parking lot and her family. Asencion, Danny, and Kasandra are very nice, and very open to the Gospel. We had a lesson which went well. At the end, Asencion told us she had lost her calendar, and was very distressed about the situation. Danny suggested we pray for help finding it. He did, and the Lord blessed us all with a miracle. This calendar she had been searching for was found. It was a perfect way to end the appointment. We had a good District Meeting too. We went over to visit the Naper 6 District Meeting. They're doing very well. We came home and had lunch. We had some time for finding then. We didn't find anyone immediately, but did on a stop by. The Lees had referred us to visit the Baylogs, who are a less active family. They are on the Hoyt family's focus list, so we were excited to hear they've been on so many peoples minds. We had tried calling, but hadn't yet stopped by. We knocked on the door, and they let us in. They're great! Sister Baylog is 50% Sister Craven and 50% Sister Pope. Very exciting. The daughter has been asking to go to church for the last several weeks because of her contact with the Hoyts daughter. They're very open, have testimonies, and hopefully will come back. We also hope to see the kids baptized. After this, we went over to dinner at the Whipples. They had over a non member, which was great. We taught her. She's doing well and has a Book of Mormon. She's going to try to meet with Elder Ahlman down in Joliet. After this, we went to teach Amanda again over at the Stavrons. She is doing very well, and everything really clicked when we taught her. Our next teaching appointment will hopefully be with the Bishop.

Tuesday was a good day. We had some good studies, and some good appointments. We also had some fun time finding, but didn't find anyone. We got to teach Mike, and visit Maple Terrace. We also got to visit the Apodacas. We had a good visit with her son who attends another church. We got to visit and teach Jeremy, who is doing well. We also had a couple fall throughs, but had a good day overall. We ended our proselyting at the Matucks for dinner and a lesson. For the lesson we brought our Preach My Gospels and had them take the Christlike Attribute Test in Chapter 6. We then went through what are the 2 Christlike Attributes you're best at, and 2 you want to focus on for improvement. Patience was a pretty common theme for improvement. We all made some plans on how to improve.

This is something I do regularly. I pick at least one attribute to focus on each week. This week I'm focusing on Diligence. Last week I focused on Patience. The Lord really helps us grow as we focus on these things. It's pretty neat, I was studying in Colossians 3 Tuesday morning, and it really tied into this process of being . It explains that we must cast off anger, malice, etc, and put on the bowels of mercies, longsuffering, humility, etc. We discussed this and came to the conclusion that this was talking about casting off our desire and even capacity to do evil, and replacing it with the desire and capacity to be like Christ. The whole process that King Benjamin describes as "becoming a saint through the Atonement." Having the Lord change our hearts is a great thing. I'm grateful to be there to help others have their hearts changed by Christ. He's certainly helping me as I serve Him.

I love you, and appreciate all you do! Have a great week, and keep it up with the Book of Mormon. Please also tell me about some missionary work you've been doing! I love to hear about that.

Love,

Elder Bradley E McMullin