September 17, 2011

Hello my dearly beloved family.

Things here are greattt! Things are picking back up in our area. We've been struggling to find new people to teach consistently. We find tons of people but their schedules conflict with ours quite often because we have lots of meetings, exchanges with zone leaders, etc. We have people come to church each week that we just meet around and invite but then we can never get appointments set up with them. They are all Disney slaves. Don't tell them I said that because they get offended hahaha. We're trying to find a balance.

But Thursday and Friday we saw miracles! We taught 3 roommates of a member on Thursday. The member's name is Amy and she is from Orem. Went to Mountain View. So we know a lot of the same people. It's fun to play the "who do we both know" game in this ward haha. There is a girl in the ward named Elisheva that is from Sacramento and knows Hayley and her family and friends. She told me yesterday that she put a picture that Elder Gregson and I were in on Facebook and Gina Hernandez saw it and commented about how Elisheva and I know each other. Pretty funny stuff. Small world. LDS world. Any way back to Amy's friends: their names are April, Patti, and Kat. They all have catholic backgrounds and are pretty devoted. But Elder Gregson and I had a great lesson with them all.

Later that day we went to go see Alex (the recent-convert Alex) because we wanted to drop something off for her birthday. We gave her some treats and a balloon that says "Baby Girl" and is all cutesy and stuff. It's funny because before she was baptized she always joked about how she felt like she was preparing to get married, not baptized hahaha. So we wanted to congratulate her on her new baby girl haha. So while we were talking to her out on the sidewalk of her apartment complex a girl walked by named Mayra. We said something funny to her about wishing Alex a Happy Birthday and she stopped and talked to us for a while. She said she wanted to come to church. So we will be teaching her soon. Then right as we were about to get in the car, Elder Gregson started to say "Hey, you should call kens..." (Kensie is a member in our ward) when lo and behold Kensie and her 3 friends drove up and stopped. One of them, Amanda (the one that went on the Temple tour a long time ago), we have been trying to contact forever . . .  so that was a miracle. And then one in the backseat said they wanted to come to church too and will be there tomorrow. Everything happened in such an amazingly timely manner that there is no way there wasn't some divine help from upstairs. It was unreal! Oh and I forgot to mention that the previous night, as we were praying, Elder Gregson had that impression that we need to go see Kensie so we could talk to Amanda. "...the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make them mighty..." (1 Nephi 1:20).

Then on Friday we had a super-Spirit-filled lesson with a Canadian girl named Arden that came to church last week and another guy named Xander. We had 3 members there. It was a little pow-wow. We started by asking a little about their background and Xander explained how he was Buddhist. Right when he said that, in my head I was thinking "Oh no...this is going to be interesting teaching a Christian and a Buddhist at the same time." But it actually went reallyyy well. We talked a lot about the Holy Ghost and about the Book of Mormon. At the end we invited Xander to pray and he said a very sincere, heartfelt, kneeling prayer to Heavenly Father. The Spirit was very strong. We pointed it out and hope that they were able to recognize that the Holy Ghost was there with us. They said it felt peaceful, so that's a start! It was great.

On Tuesday we went to Deland on exchanges. I got to see Grandpa, so that was wonderful. I'm pretty sure he is struggling with health and some other things. He seemed a little worrisome. Please say a prayer for him.

Then on Wednesday we went on exchanges with the Orlando zone leaders, Elder Bennett and Elder Hyde (speaking of Elder Bennett, Mom, you asked when he gets home: December 27th). Every Wednesday they go set up a table and the University of Central Florida campus with posters and tons of supplies. So we were there from 9 am to 2 pm. I got a little tan haha. All the students walk by in floods so we talked to hundreds and hundreds of people. It was the funnest and funniest thing I've done in a while! There are a lot of scantily clad brazen hussies at UCF though :) . Gotta be careful! Eyes straight down sometimes hahaha.

It's actually really sad to see what the world is coming to concerning morals, dress, and modesty. It is so prevalent. Everywhere you look there is some type of pornographic picture or immoral something. The magazines in the grocery check out lines are disgusting. And that is what the world is saying is alright and even popular. Elder Oaks gave an awesome CES fireside about Tolerance vs. Truth this last Sunday. It was amazing. You should look it up actually. Anyway...that is my little spiel about morals this week. Hahaha.

Just to answer the other two questions you asked before we have to bounce: I'm sleeping great. I've never been more tired in my life. I've probably said that in previous emails but now...it's pharrelllllll. So tired. But the Lord is my strength, right!? Right! And concerning Elder Mullen: I see him all the time. He is in my old area, Hunter's Creek West. We live right across the street from him and we also see him every Monday at the office when we do accountability with President. So...hope everything is great with the both of you! Have a wonderful day, Sabbath, and rest of next week! Love you!

--
Elder Austin Gable Engemann