The Beginning 8/29/15

Hey so these last few days have been pretty cool. We have learned just so much already. My companion is Elder Olsen, he is from Arizona. My district is awesome there are some pretty great missionaries here. I am the senior companion for a while until about Tuesday then we switch. The spirit is so strong, it is awesome to feel it everyday.

So our first lesson with an investigator was yesterday. It was our teacher pretending to be a man he taught on his mission. His name is Bill. We knew a few things about him from our teacher but we weren't given to much to go off of. Three companionships taught Bill and we were the last ones. We heard that it was interesting but he didn't like to pray very much. so when it was our turn before we knocked on the door we said a quick prayer and then got started. All of that training at Mission Life really helped. I kind of had an idea of how to do it. When we got in there and started talking with Bill, we had originally decided to talk to him about the Atonement and God's love for him. When we started talking we got to know him and we went completely off of what we wanted to talk about. We did talk a little about God's love for him but Elder Olsen told an experience he has had in his life that was similar to Bill's and then we started to connect with him.

Towards the end of the lesson, which was only about 15 minutes long, we mentioned prayer. I thought he would start to shut down like the others but he didn't. We understood him and we helped him understand that God was still there for him. We shared James 1: 5 with him and told him that he went through a similar experience as Joseph Smith. At the end we extended the invitation to him to pray that night even though he said that he had just given up because he didn't think God was there listening to him. When we asked him though he said that he would try it again. The spirit was so strong in there, probably the strongest I have felt so far. We get to go teach him again tonight.

After that lesson when we walked out the door, Elder Olsen and I were so pumped we can't wait to get out there and do it for real. We get to start teaching either Mormons pretending to be investigators or an actual investigator starting Monday until Thursday. I can't wait to see how we do. Other than that the food is good, the teachers are great, and the church is true.

Elder Ellison