This week has probably been one of the best weeks of my mission! We taught 10 lessons with members present and 3 other lessons! Wow! About half of these lessons involve one lady that we have been teaching and the other half involves a girl. She is 11 years old, so Kate's age. Her sister was recently baptized and her mother will be once she and her fiancé are married. It's really cool to have lessons daily with them and see how much they have progressed and learned from between each visit. We've been watching the animated stories from the Book of Mormon with our adult investigator to give her a visual and we're starting with the girl also. The woman we teach loves them. It's helped her reading! One day we were in 1 Nephi 18 with her and the next day she came back and told us that she just got to Alma and read all night because she has insomnia. She proved she did too with all the questions and explaining to us that went on. She is REALLY looking forward to her baptism on March 25 as are we! We've grown to love her a lot, and to answer Dad's question, I think that true service is being filled with Charity, the pure love of Christ, and acting upon it. Sometimes, it may feel like we don't have it, but we must continue to pray for it! We are promised in Moroni 7 that we will be filled with that love if we so desire it! "Love is THE greatest motivator." A quote by Elder Neumeyer, he's home now and was my first AP. So, true service is having charity to those around you.
The 11 year old girl was originally the sisters investigator but because of a new mission rule, only investigators in your area are we allowed to teach. At first we were very bummed about this but we knew, thanks to Sister Southwick reminding us, that we would see miracles come from this. This young girl is very shy. She definitely reminded me of Kate at first! But with Elder Skinner and myself working hard to get her to open up she has! Didn't take long either! We even have handshakes now, ha ha! (I've definitely noticed that I love teaching children a little more than adults, idk why.) So we watched the Tree of Life video with her and discussed everything with her, all the symbolism, (it's also where she was in her reading) and we came upon the ordinance of baptisms for the dead. Her sister was in the lesson so that's how we think it got to that. After discussing the purposes of baptisms for the dead with her, she got really excited and we invited her to baptism. She got shy again but then I asked if she would like to set the date for herself on a calendar. She really got excited after that and took our planners and set herself for February 13th! It was such an awesome day for all of us! She is still SUPER excited for it! Everyday we are over there, well almost everyday, she's more and more excited!
So that's how our investigators are doing! Let me tell you how Elder Skinner and I spent our PDay yesterday! We went mountain biking! Richmond is supposed to have one of the best spots on the east coast! So we did this huge 10 mile ride yesterday and it was pretty scary at some parts! But we were safe, thanks to our prayers that we would be that morning! It was also a very beautiful ride! I'll be sending you some pictures!
I love you all!!
-Elder Austin Mounts
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