"I'm doing good. The work here in Charleston is going really well. I
feel more settled into the assignment of zone leader. Our missionaries
are doing zone wide prayers of faith for specific purposes. This week
we all prayed that we would find thirty six new investigators and we
found a total of thirty. We lacked a little faith but it is exciting
to think that thirty of our brothers and sisters who were lost and
looking have found more light. Whether each one of them will choose to
enter into covenant with Heavenly Father, they have more light today
than they may have ever had in their lives. It strengthened my
testimony of prayer and of faith. In the Old Testament whenever David
would go to war the odds were always majorly against him. In the back
of my mind I thought, Ok he won last time, and he beat the
Philistines, but this is a bigger army, more chariots and more horses,
and every time the Lord delivered the victory into David's hands as
long as he was righteous and obedient. It is a real conflict that we
are engaged in. We had two missionaries in Sissonville that had a bad
experience with a member who they didn't realize until later was not
to be contacted by direction of the mission president. They called us
and asked for a blessing, when we got to their house there was a
palpable darkness and fear in the room. We sang a hymn and said a
prayer. Elder Mackelprang and I gave them each blessings and you could
feel the darkness diminish and go away. Their countenances were
changed. In the mission we talk about numbers some and we never want
to be motivated by the numbers for the sake of recognition. Each
number represents an individual who is making that jump from some
degree of darkness to a greater degree of light. I'm excited for the
mission to grow, I'd like to see a temple here in West Virginia and I
think it's possible. When they broke ground for the Midian, ID temple
Elder Bednar said that its more about where the people's hearts are
than anything else. So as a zone we're seeing some neat things come
out of unified prayer. It reminds me of Revelations were it talks
about the prayers of the saints being held in vessels or containers in
heaven. If we think of it as each blessing requiring a certain
spiritual volume to occur, each prayer fills up the vessel a little
more. The more spiritual our standing and the greater the sincerity,
the more volume each prayer could be said to have. When the vessel is
full it overflows, and rains down the blessing from heaven to earth.
Some blessing have small vessels, others seem to be endless pits.
Disobedience seems to put a cap on the vessel that only the Savior can
take off. There is power in prayer, and sanctification in faith. I
hope you guys have an awesome week. I love you all so much. Be safe, I
love you"