Week 16 and 17

Dear Mom,

Thank you for writing me so consistantly. I’m always so excited to see an envolope in the mailbox. I keep every letter that I get from everyone and plan on making a book for them all once I get home. I can’t remember if I told you that I switched how I memorize scriptures. I made a spreadsheet that has squares numberd one through thirty and each block has 13 slots, ever day I add a scripture to the block that matches the day of the month and this is probably really boring for you to read…anyways, I’m memorizeing lots of scriptures in spanish and am excited about it. Another thing I’m excited about is learning how to be like Christ (I’m serious). You know how I love to be organized about everthing though…and…in Preach My Gospel, Ch. 6 at the very last page theres an activity to answer a bunch of questions on different Christ-Like attributes, and I’m going to make a spreadsheet and fill in my response each week(or transfer, I havn’t decided) to help me focus on changing throughout all of my mission. I feel as though I should first focus my efforts on patients, I’ve been very frustrated latly with the lack of obedience among missionary’s, it’s like “why are you here?” I need to be careful though and loving and not start any contentions. I’m loving my personal study time. I’ve been keeping a study journal and have learned so much more. I’ve also decided that my mini size scriptures are the way to go. I’m waiting on some covers, but I’ve put my big ones on the shelf, I never use them.

Something really cool happened at Church today! We had one of our investigators come whom I never thought would come to Church. We were teaching his girlfriend and her two children, but he was never interested in what we had to share, he was almost always drunk and would leave after we showed up. His girlfriend said he was getting very angry and was yelling at her often…needless to say, we didn’t focus on him, we focused on her. But one day he walked up to us while we were on the couch and said pointing to the couch, “I think I need to…” and that’s it, he’d just say that and point, so I thought he wanted us to move but he says, “no I think I need to…” and Elder Morales said in his thick guatomalen accentm, “do you want to meet with us?” and he started to cry, he told us his very sad life story starting with adoption and then foster homes eventualy jail, when he tried to look for his family he just found his mother was into hard drugs and the rest of his family was splintered and had there own problems, then he started talking about his problem with anger and finaly he said the magic words, “I want to change.” BOOM!!! I pulled out a Book of Mormon and tried to think of what the perfect scripture could be(usualy I can think of one on the spot) but I couldn’t think straight, it was like the Lord or the Adversary was blocking my thoughts, so I said a silent prayer to find the perfect scripture for this man at this time and it was like a light turned on. I turned to mosiah 5:2 and had him read it and find what made the people change, he started to cry and said it was the spirit. I gave my testimony of change and the atonement of Jesus Christ and enjoyed the sweet moment of the spirit teaching us all a valuble lesson on repentance. We’ve since gone back and he has been a perfect investigator. The questions he ask’s are the textbook examples of the questions our message answers. He's so commited right now, I really hope it sticks. I’m really excited to be a missionary!

I love you very much,

--
-Elder Matthew D. Evans