Teaching by the spirit

Mum,
Fun fun fun. I totally want to do a road trip to see all the
family after I get home. Probably the summer after, I'll just pile
in the car with whoever wants to go and make the whole trip!! Well not
too much time to think about that one. Gavin is sooo huge though!
That's really good. And it looks like Justin is doing well with the
No Shave November! I'm glad you got to spend some time there. I got
your Christmas CD, it is really good. Thanks so much, some of the
songs I thought I was home though! Haha, it was good. This week has
been really good. It's crunch time to make the miracles happen and boy
and they coming along. We've had some really neat experiences these
last couple of days, it seems like every appointment we go into is an
outpouring of the Spirit, I love it. I'll share a couple with you and
then one with Dad. I'm sure you'll spread them around though, just use
discretion. So I was on exchange with an Elder from
England and he just served in Sheffield where they are teaching loads
of eastern europeans. There is one ward that has had 31 baptisms this
year and most of them are from Slovakia. So spending time with him
helped me catch the fire of finding the prepared people. We got in to
teach these Polish people and it was really cool. None of them spoke
any English whatsoever so we used the internet. We did our best but
the Spirit was really strong even though I had no idea half of what
they said. We're going back and I'm gonna try and pick up on how to
read in Polish but we'll see what happens. It was just fun the see
how the Spirit magnifies what we can't do. Then we had a super crazy
and weird miracle. So that woman who came to church and was really
well fellowshipped has been visiting her dying mother. She said she
wants to be baptised but we knew it would be after her mum passed away
and she still has some concerns about water. So the members have been
amazing. They organised the Branch President down there to give her
and her mum a blessing, we only found out about this on Friday and
they all felt the Spirit. I'll give you more updates on that
later but wow. I think that's all I have to report on this week.
Thanks so much for everything mum I love you. Take care and I'll talk
to you next week!
Elder Rowley

Dad,
Tanner is playing my Ukulele?!?! Well, he'd better be good at
it. Stake Conference would have been really fun, especially on the Dry Council. I hope Jon
and Chase don't get in too much trouble before I get home! Try and
get a picture of both of them for me. I'm really glad mum got to go
to Oregon over the weekend, that would have been really fun. I've
always loved it there. Maybe I'll get a master degree there someday!
Who knows! Well maybe I should tell you a little about our week here.
We're still working really really hard to reach our mission goal and
we are getting some really crazy amazing miracles. I told mum about a
couple of them so she'll have to update you on it but I'll tell you a
couple as well. I noticed something really fun about teaching. I
totally change my vocabulary and the way I talk when I teach different
people. We taught an African guy who is a preacher and I felt like a
preacher, using bible verses before everything I said. Teaching has
never been so much fun as in the last couple of weeks. I've never
felt the Spirit so much in a teaching appointment as now. We had an
experience with a woman who can't get baptised because of where she
lives. She has tried to move out in the past and has been really
close to baptism but something always goes wrong for her. Because of
this she feels really bad that she knows its all true but she can't
get baptised, she questions a lot of things now as well. So we'd
planned to go and teach her about baptism and assess the situation
further. We'd seen her earlier in the week and it was a spiritual
feast. When we sat down in the appointment with her though the Spirit
took us a completely different way, I think I only said baptism like
once. We read Alma 32 and she really enjoyed it, she's developing
such a love for the scriptures it's great. When we'd finished reading
she got a little quiet and then looked up at me and said, "Why did you
choose that scripture today" I told her that we'd been advised to
choose 10 chapters that would be good for our investigators so last
week I prayed and found 10. I had them written down and I felt the
Spirit tell me that I should choose that one. She then told us that
she had prayed before the appointment and God had told her that we
wouldn't talk about baptism when we saw her. It makes her upset cause
she can't right now so she didn't want to feel bad and God told her we
wouldn't. I'm just glad we listened to the Spirit and didn't talk
about it. She then told us that from this experience we'd just had
she knew that God loved her and that he really cared. She also knew
that this wasn't just our job but that we actually cared about her.
It was really really cool. We've had an experience like that in
almost every single appointment this week. I can't tell you how many
times an investigator has stopped us in an appointment to explain how
we've answered their prayer by what we've said. It's been really neat.
So pretty much the church is true and being a missionary rocks. I've
been reading the Ensign and that always gets me really excited to be a
normal member of the church because there is so much potential and
opportunity there but I'm still really grateful I can be a missionary
for a while. I love it. Thanks for everything Dad. Take care of
yourself. I love you!
Elder Rowley