Be Prepared

Dear Family,

That is awesome elder Hatch talked with Aaron!!!!  I hope they talked for a little while!  Does Aaron know who he is rooming with?  

You guys went to the Provo Temple? I thought Grandma and Grandpa worked at Timpanogas?  but that's cool.  It looks like a spaceship.  I went there every week at the MTC!  Did you guys see missionaries there?

I have been studying a lot about Joseph of Egypt too!  Isn't it cool to know that we are related to that great guy!  My favorite lesson from that story is how even when he was away from home, he didn't forget about the great principles he learned there.  He could have made many excuses to fall into temptation... nobody would know...when in Rome do as Romans do....etc  But he stayed true to who he was and the God he learned to love.   It's funny to think  that if he had fallen into temptation he probably would have been imprisoned as well, and without the company of the Holy Ghost he wouldn't have been able to interpret the dreams that would be his ticket out.

We played Basketball today!  It has been a while and my B-ball skills are suffering, but it was fun.  Elder Richardson didn't have any shorts so he wore my St.Louis cardinals pajama pants.  

This week we have been working a lot trying to help people keep their commitments as usual.  We found a couple new families to teach as well.  We have a few investigators that have baptismal dates and are progressing little by little.  Vañia just finished 3 Nephi 11 and already has a testimony of God's love for us and The Book of Mormon.  She told us a story about how when she was younger she lived close to Brasil and she got mixed up with a drug deal... so people were coming after her to kill her. She ran away and got as far as possible from there.  She had nobody to run to and lived in the street for a few days and prayed constantly for help. A lady whom she never met took her in and gave her a place to sleep and food.  And she bore her testimony that she knows God loves his children.  It was cool.

The Paredez Family (7th Day Adventists) are coming along okay.  They still haven't come to church.  But they are reading The Book of Mormon little by little and praying for an answer.  We' ll see this coming week how bad they want to keep commitments and know if the church is true.  

The Rojas family is set on coming back, but due to the mom being extremely pregnant they haven't been coming for a little bit.  But they committed that right after the birth they will come back.

I hope the vacation goes good and that it is starting to warm up there!  

Love, Elder Neifert

PS Oh yeah and the Branch President, on Sunday, from the pulpit, gave me a surprise ten minute talk.  I talked about the sacrament and the atonement.  It was a good reminder to always be thinking of spiritual messages to share.  On the mission it seems that about 85% of the time we are winging it, and it is a definite faith builder as we pray and plead with the Lord to help us know what to say.