hey again

May 9, 2011

Dear Family,

Well it hasn't been very long since we last talked, not a whole lot has changed since last night actually. But it was awesome talking to you guys. I love you guys lots and couldn't have asked for a better family. Christmas is just around the corner right?

So I'll try and think of a few things to write about that I didn't already talk about on the phone with you guys.....umm. Well right now we're really focusing on finding more people to teach. Last week we found a lot of people who seem pretty solid. This week we're hoping to pick things up with them and start teaching them. We're working with a decent amount of investigators that haven't been making very much progress in a pretty long time ( a few exceptions), and since Elder Ploeger and I are both pretty new in this area, we need to figure out what concerns they may have and really stress the importance of doing all they can to progress. Not to say that it's all on them, we've got to improve ourselves too. But really finding more people, the golden people who are prepared and craving the gospel in their lives (whether they realize it yet or not) is what this area needs. Can do. We need to start asking the Lord more frequently for His help in leading us to find these people. The truth is, they're always out there. Regardless of the area, regardless of whether we're on missions or not. It's too bad I wasn't more aware of this back home when I had opportunities to share the gospel with others. So we're going to focus on finding more of these people and picking things up with the people we're starting to find now.

We found one man last week during some tracting. We knocked on his door and he came outside and said he didn't have time to talk because he was on the phone. But it turned into a solid conversation that lasted for a few minutes once he found out who we were. He thought we were salesmen at first (people think we're police or the FBI sometimes too, pretty cool). We explained who we were and what we were doing and he was shocked to hear it. He was drunk at the time and he told us that he was really struggling with things right now, and he said drinking was one of these big concerns of his. He was a really sincere and humble guy, and it was clear he was in a pretty desperate situation right now. I couldn't help but feel sorry for him and the things he must be going through, but I was really glad that he has an opportunity to embrace the gospel and let the Lord heal him and his life. He was open to our message and said that he believes we could have been led to his door at this point in his life. And that's what this is all about I think. Of course we need to all be baptized to enter the kingdom of heaven (John 3:5) so we're out here helping people prepare for baptism, but really it all goes a lot deeper than that. This man can only have his life healed by the Savior and His Atonement and Gospel, baptism is just part of the healing process and part of the process of turning his life over to Christ. And the same goes for everyone, maybe it's not so extreme or obvious in all of our unique cases, but in the end we all need to embrace the Lord to fix the wrongs that we make or that others make against us in our lives. And that's what the Lord's gospel is all about. His good news is that we can turn to Him and we can find peace and we can live again, just as He lives again today.

Love you guys, I hope you all have a good week. Glad I got to talk to you last night, made my day without a doubt. You're the best!

love,

elder lamb

I need to get more creative with my subjects

....O-/--<l:

in case you can't tell, that's a skateboarder in the subject. if i were really good i'd be able to make him doing a kick-flip or at least an ollie.

hey how are you guys? it was a good week over here in roseville. we had two days of specialized training where two of the zones in the mission got together all day. it was a good experience. the assistants shared a good message about the success of the mission and the importance of giving the credit to the lord and how we can't afford to get prideful and lose the momentum of seeing all of these sweet miracles. (and by the way, one of the assisstants is elder bowler, he's one of elder ward's good buds from his volleyball team. he's been to our house one time in Portola. he and i talk about elder ward whenever we run into each other. at the mission christmas party he came up to me and said i looked familiar, we started talking and figured out he had stayed a day or two at our house a few years ago with Trevor! small world) and president holmes gave some awesome instruction. he's the man. he talked, broke down the idea of preaching the gospel and focusing on faith and repentance. difficult to sum up all that he said in two days worth of instruction, but it really was a great instruction. made a big difference in our teaching. after the days of training we taught lessons where we focused on faith in jesus christ and repentance, and used whatever specific principles we needed for those people, but kept the focus on faith and repentance. it brought the spirit into the lessons stronger than before. we had some really powerful experiences with investigators and members. The spirit is stronger than ever in these lessons, and people are able to understand more fully what we're all about. In some of these specific lessons I'm thinking of, we had members really open up to us and share things with us that we had never known until now. They felt the spirit very strong in these lessons and received personal revelation right there, not because of anything we necessarily said but because it seemed to me like we were simply preaching the gospel with more power and simplicity.

we found a street named Alma Street. We only had time to tract a few houses, nothing has happened yet. but stay tuned.

ah out of time, more next week. have a good week! i'm pumped to get to call and talk to you guys next sunday. see ya then! love you guys lots

elder lamb