Inviting people to change

This week 

Well this week we spent the majority of the week moving the mission home to a real home. We will now be able accommodate up to 20 missionaries. So, my incredibly awesome spiritual experiences were limited. But I will share with you my favorite from this week.

Thursday the whole office was stuck doing errands all day long. I was not going to be needed so I called a member to go with me all day. It was an awesome day and we started off with Anthony... 

Anthony is an investigator that Sister Mendez and Sister Ramos have been teaching with Elder Mejia and Elder Rebolledo, but I wanted to get to know him. So Jimmy (the member) and I went to visit him. Anthony is 22 years old, and very intelligent, which was obvious from the beginning. Though he started to talk about things like realism, evolution, and that God, Jesus Christ and all of Christianity is just mythology, (the sister missionaries had warned me about this, hahaha) that they are just great stories but as to the validity that it actually happened is skeptical. We started to talk about the plan of salvation (one of my most favorite topics to talk about with people) and when we got to the point about how after the resurrection and final judgment there are three places where someone can go, celestial, terrestrial, and telestial. I explained that in order to go to the celestial kingdom you must be baptized and make covenants with God. 

He responded that he had already been baptized and done first communion, what more did he have to do? 

I told him that he had to enter into a temple of God, a holy place where he could make a covenant between himself and the Lord. 

This was something that he never had heard before and his ears perked up and he started to ask me questions. I bore my testimony about the sacredness of temples and how they affect not only this life but most importantly the life to come, and that in the temple you can feel His presence. 

He asked me how he could go inside to feel the things that I told him that I had felt and to make those covenants with God, and I told him that he had to enter through the straight and narrow path by being baptized. I told him that we would help him get in the temple in 1 year by being baptized the 10th of January and he accepted. He was very excited to start this personal journey of being more like the Savior. I told him that these things are more than just mythology, but it is the divine reason that explains everything. I told him that many people try to separate God and science when truly what we know about science only bears witness that God exists. It was an incredible moment and I felt awesome. We could feel the spirit so strong.

I love the mission. 

Here you can really see the difference you can have in someone’s life. 

My challenge for you this week is:

Invite someone to do something concerning the gospel. Challenge a friend to pray as a family every night this week, or to come to church with you. Invite someone to do one of the commandments. 

Do something missionary like this week.

And tell me about it. 

I love you all 

Elder Lyle