First baptisms

Holy smokes. It is already January. 

Well let me just start off with a little bit of a spiritual slam. 

In the very very short 5 months of my mission i have come to understand so much more of the divine message that i have the privilege to share with the people in the Missouri St. Louis mission. I have come to a further knowledge of the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ being the most correct thing in existence today.  

This past week has been amazing. We have two baptisms lined up for this Saturday and i am so happy for them. Jasmine(13) and Arora(8) are their names. They are sisters and both their parents are less active but are working toward activity. I have never seen anyone be more excited to be baptized then little Arora. She is sooo happy. I cannot wait to see her face when she comes out of the water. 

This past Sunday i gave a talk in Church and it was pretty funny. I spoke on goals and how to set and achieve righteous goals. The whole time i was thinking, if my dad were here he would destroy this topic with his amazing mad skillz at making and keeping his Goals. hehe 

This past week I've focused a lot in my studies in Faith. I just wanna tell everyone a little something i learned. In the Book of Mormon there is this guy named Alma and in Chapter 32 of his book he tells us a little something about faith. I’m not gonna lie, i totally took this chapter for granted all through seminary and in my own reading until i started doing a little bit deeper study. In Alma 32 we learn literally how to GROW FAITH. I want everyone to know that this is the only place, in all of the scripture that we have, that actually tells us how to make our faith grow. Then there is the question, why do i need to know that... Well you need to know that because Faith leads to Repentance which makes you want to keep your baptismal Covenants and by doing so you keep living the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

Just a thought... hahaha

oh, i almost forgot. I had an awesome experience on exchanges with Elder Cardiff. He was in my district in the MTC so we knew we were going to have a blast. A little thing they frogot to tell me before the exchange was that they were OUT of miles so we had to walk all across creation to make it to our appointments. We had this awesome experience though when Elder Cardiff decided that we should knock on a few doors. I knocked on my first one and a lady opened the door. She was slightly embarrassed because she didn't have her "top teeth" in at the moment so i did most the talkin. I told her who we were and why we were there at her door and she just looked at us and said, "hold on a sec." then she dissipeared into her house for a few seconds then opened the door again with nice white teeth. hehehe She talked with us for a little then i asked if we could share something with her . She obliged and we talked about God and Jesus. She then said, “I already know all this so I'm alright. You boys have a good day.”  But the spirit told us to stand firm so we did. We then explained a little about the book of mormon and the sweet lady became interested in what we were saying. Both Elder Cardiff and I were able to testify of the power of the book and the Joy it will bring and she told us she would read it and would enjoy another visit. BAM someone who is now interested. 

Well thats all I've got and this is the longest one ever. sooo 

Peace

Love elder Brian