27 April 2015

Dear Family and Friends,

Thank you for the letters that you send me every week. I really appreciate them, it's always good to hear about what's going on back home. That's crazy that Sister Kenfield moved. She was really awesome! One day after seminary she told me about a clip that she saw on BYUtv and she thought I'd like it. It was a video about someone in the BYU Marching Band. At the end of the video it talked a little bit about how to apply to the BYU Marching Band. If she didn't tell me about that clip, I probably wouldn't have thought of auditioning to the BYU Marching Band! She was a really awesome Seminary Teacher too! Rachel, I'm glad that you did well on your MCA! What kind of motors did you make in science class? I didn't like The Grapes of Wrath mainly because I had to spend my summer reading it for high school. I hope you like it more than I did. Woah, there are a ton of babies being born in the Princeton Ward recently!  {One more baby, a boy, born this past week. That makes three within two weeks, plus one more to a friend in a neighboring ward.}

So this week was more of a slow week for Elder Roemer and I. We're dealing with a problem that most missionaries would die for. We don't really have many investigators, because we've baptized all of our other ones. We've been so blessed recently with many prepared individuals that have accepted the Gospel wholeheartedly! We've been able to work with a ton of really awesome people recently, and I'm really grateful for that. So we've been doing a lot of finding and contacting this last week. We have quite a few potential investigators that we'll be meeting with this upcoming week. All of our recent converts are really awesome with inviting others to learn about the Gospel. This last week we had a lesson with Enkeleda and we talked about the Restoration and we watched the Restoration Film. After that lesson we talked about her friends that she invited to her baptism and we challenged her to invite them to come to the Institute Center here in Durrës and to watch the Restoration Film with us. At church on Sunday she told us that she talked to her friends and that she and five others would come to the Center on Tuesday to watch the Restoration Film with us. I was blown away that she had invited so many of her friends to learn more! Our other investigators also have a strong desire to share the Gospel with others around them! This week we also had an exchange with the APs. I was with Elder Stewart here in Durrës. It was really crazy because he was one of the missionaries here when I was being trained. It was really awesome to spend a day with him. He is such an awesome and dedicated missionary. He is able to get nearly every person to stop and talk to him on the street. I have no idea how he does it! It's like magic! It was really awesome to serve with him for a day. I learned a lot of stuff from him.

So this week I learned a lot about faith. I love how faith is a principle of power and action. It was because of the faith of individuals that Christ was able to heal them. It was by faith that Peter walked on the water. It was by faith that the Brother of Jared saw Jesus Christ. And it was by faith that Joseph Smith received an answer to his prayer. I've also been reading in Jesus the Christ a bit recently and I'm reading that part that talks a lot about Christ and His miracles. It talks about how Christ was in a place where the people had little to no faith and they we hard in their hearts. It talked about how Christ left that area, unable to work any miracles among them. I'm sure Christ would have loved to perform miracles there, to heal the sick, to give the blind sight, to give the deaf hearing, and so on. However, because the individuals were so hard in their hearts He couldn't perform any miracles among them. Faith always precedes the miracle. We read a ton in the Book of Mormon about how some individuals, like Laman and Lemuel, had seen angels and had experienced the power of God countless times in their lives; however, they always had doubts again afterward. That's due to the lack of faith that they had in the first place. If they would have had faith in God, those miracles they saw would have strengthened their faith. Due to their lack of faith and their hard hearts, they didn't gain anything from those miracles which they had experienced. We all need to have faith in Christ. Faith in Christ is the first step of the Gospel. We must have faith in order to gain those blessings that come from the Gospel. As Alma taught, if we can no more than desire to believe, we need to let this desire work in us until we have space within us to believe (See Alma 32:27). I know that when we have faith in Christ we receive many blessings in our lives. I've seen them personally in my life, and I know that you'll see them in your lives as well!

Thank you for the love and support that you send to me! I couldn't do this without you. Javë të mbarë. Ju dua shumë. Kalofshi bukur. U nglifshi shnosh.

Me dashuri të madhe,

Elder Watson