March 31st, 2010 (Email)

Hello again!

Hm... So it seems as though I forgot to tell you that this was Zone Conference week. Sorry about that! Don't worry, I'll always e-mail you every week. The first week of every transfer I have zone conference on Tuesday over here so on those weeks I'll be e-mailing you on Wednesday. Such is the case today.
The Fed-Ex guy JUST walked into the office and handed me your package almost immediately after I read that you'd sent it off. Good timing!
We had another miracle happen yesterday. Bro. Doug Tice is the husband of a re-activated member of our ward. The missionaries have been teaching him since Elder Rada was serving here and even before that. He's what we call an "eternal investigator." Anyway, we visit him every week and he comes to church every Sunday for all three hours. He's read the Book of Mormon twice and he's currently half-way through the D&C. Yesterday we really focused our lesson on baptism. We usually bring it up but this time we were really bold. He's finally set a goal to be baptized. April 24th is what we're working towards. If he wants to be baptized sooner we'll baptize him sooner. But for now that's the goal. It's a really big deal that he's even set a baptismal goal. We told the Bishop Kovacs and Brother Minus and they were enthralled.
Michelle is still doing good. We still have a goal set for her to be baptized April 17th. She didn't come to church on Sunday because of an issue with her kids but she's made arrangements to come to church to see General Conference next Sunday.
Nick Katanjent came to church for the third time. He's the 16-year-old surfer kid. He's made good friends with the priest quorum. Hopefully he'll commit to be baptized when we visit him tonight. He likes church and he likes it when we visit him but he's kind of intimidated by the rules aka the commandments. He's a good kid and he really needs good influences in his life.
Zone Conference was good yesterday. We were instructed on some of the things we must do in order to have 88 baptisms in May. We focused quite a bit on teaching-- how to begin teaching and how to focus our lessons around baptism. President focused a lot on the Book of Mormon and he invited us to read the Book of Mormon within the next 87 days. Joseph Smith translated it in 87 days so I should be able to read it in 87 days. President emphasized that the Book of Mormon truly is the keystone of our religion. He shared a story about a convert couple that he met when he was teaching at the MTC. They seemed to know a lot about the church, especially for recent converts. President found out that they used to be members of the Re-organized LDS Church. They said that they started noticing that their church wasn't teaching from the Book of Mormon anymore. The Book of Mormon and the First Vision really wasn't emphasized anymore in that religion, and they were alarmed. They called up a family member who was a patriarch in their church and he said "There is only one church you can go to that teaches from the Book of Mormon anymore. I would follow you if I weren't so old." So they called our missionaries and were baptized into our church in a week. I've heard that the R-LDS Church hardly exists anymore-- it rapidly started dissolving when they started ignoring the Book of Mormon and when they allowed women to have the priesthood. President Sexton also taught us to search for the precepts found in the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith said that the Book of Mormon would help us draw nearer to God than any other book "by abiding by its precepts." Many precepts in the Book of Mormon start with the phrase "and thus we see." For example: Helaman 3:27-30, Alma 30:60, Alma 24:19. They're all over the place. President also taught us that an important purpose of the Book of Mormon is to testify of the reality of Christ's resurrection. He said that all around us Christian Churches are changing their beliefs about this fundamental truth. He said that a Baptist once told him that the biggest difference between the beliefs of our Church and the Baptist beliefs is that we take the resurrection of Jesus Christ too literally. It's true. Our belief about the Lord's Resurrection opposes the Trinity.
So in case you haven't noticed yet the subject headers for my e-mails are lines from Saturday's Warrier songs. An elder I went on exchanges with a couple weeks ago had the soundtrack and we listened to it all the way through. It was classic.
Let me list some of the excuses our investigators have given us lately for not coming to church: "My pants don't fit." "I have hemorrhoids." "Our dog jumped out of the window!" (I lie not, these are legit.)
Well I can't think of anything else that happened. Yep Sister Choi has been honorably released. Hope you're all feeling better! And don't worry about the weight loss Dad. "Courage take! For goodness sake!"
Love y'all!
Love,
Elder Tyler Lewis