May!

Hello everyone! I hope y'all were able to stay dry.

A whole bunch of storms have passed through recently. Luckily, where
we're at didn't get hit to bad, but the surrounding towns did. Earlier
this week we went up to Spurger, just a little ways north, and found
that the storm had done quite a bit of damage. Many trees had fallen
over and lots of people were without power. We spent most of our
Wednesday helping members cut up trees and haul them away. I bet we're
going to do a lot more of that soon!

Well thank you for all the prayers on our investigator's behalf. Sadly, we had
to cancel the baptism because her mom wouldn't sign the baptismal
record. So we hope we can work the miracles and
try for the baptism this Saturday. Keep praying though!

Besides that we actually had a super spiritual week. I definitely feel
super humbled and uplifted by the work we were able to do this week.
And another reason why it was so spiritual was because we went to the
temple on Thursday. I wish we could go every week!

But the miracles started when we had an exchange with our ZL. And this
time it was actually my trainer so it was like old times. But we had a
super inspired exchanged. Literally the second person we talked to
told us of how their searching to get closer to God. We were all super
astonished. She told us of how in the past year she's had a lot of
trials and tribulations and have been question God's will. I shared
Ether 12:27 with her and as we talked the spirit was so strong! In a
matter of minutes she had committed to a return appointment and the
invitation to be baptized! It was super cool! I hope she will
continue to be as excited as we are until we are able to see her
again.

And later that day we managed to talk to an older couple we had found
earlier. They don't get company much because they live in the middle
of the woods in the middle of nowhere so when we showed up they
invited us in and started talking to us. The wife was raised in a
separate religion as the husband, so when they married they found a
religion that was in the middle and settled with that. Super cool how
they decided to compromise. But the husband has had contact with the
missionaries before and as we sat down they asked us all sorts of
questions. By the end both the husband and wife had committed to read
the Book of Mormon and pray about it. The wife is good friends with a
JW and she thought we were the same religion but surprise we aren't
haha. But the spirit was super strong and we're excited to go back.

We also had a sweet experience finding a lost sheep yesterday. We had
taken this member out with us to some lessons and he asked if we could
stop by his friend's grandma's house who lived close by. So we did. I
could tell the lady looked all confused when we showed up but soon we
were doing our missionary contact saying things like "have you ever
talked to missionaries before?" And she said yes and that she was
Mormon. What? She told us she was baptized 40 years ago but when she
married she became less active. We asked if she would be interested in
hearing our message again and she said yes so we gave her a Book of
Mormon and it was incredible. As we got back in the truck our member
was so surprised he said "I've been going to that house for years and
had no idea she was Mormon." Super inspired kid.

Well those are some highlights of this week. Miracles are everywhere!

Love,
Elder Blackburn