Colin’s Letter:

I have far too much to write for my writing capabilities, so I will just write about the best thing that happened here this week in Franklin.

 

This week we decided to go teach Dante, (he has had lessons from missionaries in the past). He's an Iraq War veteran, there for two tours, was in two IED explosions, and shot three times. He is now, as of this week, working some kind of specialty construction and he's a professional MMA (mixed martial arts) fighter on the side. So when we first went to his apartment he was gone, but we talked to his wife, Sherita, at the door for a few minutes. They have two little sons who are 8 and 6 years old and are super funny little kids. We decided we should pray with her so we did right at the door, and she was so thankful for it she was really happy to talk to us

 

We stopped by the next day and Dante was outside so we decided to share a scripture and pray with him there and set up a time we could come teach him the next day. The next day we taught him and it was such a great discussion on how the Lord blesses us and how the gospel helps our lives so much and we committed him to read and pray.

 

Then two days later we came to teach him for a follow up appointment and Brother Cormany came with us to the lesson. The lesson was truly inspired we taught the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the importance of The Book of Mormon. His answers to the questions we asked were so profound, he understood everything we taught so incredibly well. Then when we taught about the importance of the Book of Mormon, Dante bore his testimony of the truthfulness of it himself and said, "After you Elders left last time I realized that after all this time I had never really taken Moroni's advise and prayed to know if its true, so when you left I did, and received an answer right then, The Holy Ghost was so strong just letting me know, yes this is true." Elder Davis committed him to be baptized on December 19th and he said yes! Then Brother Cormany, Elder Davis, and myself all bore testimony how how true the Book of Mormon is and its importance in our lives. The spirit was so strong--second only to that in the Temple. Dante also described his experience praying like, "I was praying after I read the Book of Mormon a little more and then the spirit just hit me me, LIKE--BOOM! telling me it was the truth.” Dante and his family should, by my estimate, be sealed in the Temple in oh, about a year or so, at least that's the goal!!

 

That is only one of the miracles we saw this week there are so many kind people here in Franklin, also lots of not-kind-people, but either way, I am liking it more everyday. The members of the ward are really great, there's just not a whole lot of them.

 

I also taught Elder Davis how to polish his shoes. It's wet cold and rainy right now so it makes me feel right at home............ except for one thing........ at precisely 3:13 am on November the third I was woken from my slumber to find a gargantuan COCK ROACH!!!!!! ON MY FACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I immediately freaked out and it ran off my face over my pillow and off the bed into the darkness of the night......... never to be seen again... and thus we see I now have a deeply rooted hatred for cockroaches and am now super paranoid all the time, I couldn’t go to sleep until 6 am that morning  (we wake up at 6:30 anyway) and I wrapped my entire body inside my bed sheet so as to avoid contact with any other forms of living creatures that night. Sooooo all in all it was a good week. I will write more in exactly one week’s time, have a blessed day. 

 

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-Elder White