The Church is SO True

FAMILY!!!

Go Ducks!

We had a miraculous lesson last night with Roman. We've been teaching him for two weeks and he's come to church twice and loves meeting up and is just a friendly, responsible guy. He accepted a baptismal date for Oct 4th last week, and he's really excited. He started believing in God the last couple years because of a book that he's been reading that's written by this author who's an angel or something and speaks through a Californian. So I don't know everything about it, but it seems to have some correct ideas, and some non-correct ones. Well we gave him a "strength of the youth" and he came to the lesson yesterday saying he found two different views on the same issue and he agreed more with the one written in the other book. We've been teaching him with members, which is just the way to go, and the member that helped yesterday is named Yuri Kovalevski, (he just moved from Russia a few months ago, been a member for 12 years, and his son and daughter have served missions) who's by far one of the more solid and understanding-doctrinal members of the branch. We talked about the definition of truth and how God teaches true doctrine through prophets, etc. But Roman explained that sometimes when he reads the Book of Mormon he feels like a sinner, although this green Book (has a green cover) makes him feel better like everything will be alright and there will be no punishment for our sins in the next life. Brother Yuri basically just threw it down and said, do you think it's a good thing that this book is helping you live with your sins? He kept talking and was speaking very well and the spirit was strong. Roman said that there's been moments when he's tried to do everything right but realized that he couldn't get rid of all of his sins by himself. Which is exactly right! We told him that that's more or less the purpose of the Gospel, without the Savior we'd have no hope of becoming what we need to become. I wish I could give the play by play of the whole lesson but it was one of the best ones I've ever been on, and everything just came together and we really understood each other and his heart was changed and I was feeling pretty sick before hand but felt like I was floating on clouds afterwards and we hugged each other after Roman said a ten minute prayer. Just one of those moments that I hope to never forget.

The other great miracle is a 23 year old guy named Janis Feldmanis. I was on exchanges with an elder from Vilnius last week and we were in center for a few hours talking to people. It had been pretty successful in that people would listen or give their number but we'd yet to find/teach someone really solid. Welp, as we were walking back to the church, we stopped this sharp basketball player looking business guy who had no problem with coming back to the church. He said he didn't really believe so much that God answered prayers because he's had a tough life and prayed for 2 hours on a beach a few months ago and never got an answer. I said Janis, this is probably your answer. He kinda smiled, and I did too, but I think he understood that I wasn't joking. He didn't speak English or Russian really well, but he could get the gist of everything we were saying and accepted the doctrine. It was straight out of preach my gospel, which is so fun. We taught him again this week and we were on exchanges with some Latvian elders so Elder Brown just popped his head in the door to say hi and Janis introduced himself as Brother Feldmanis. Haha that's what I'm talking about.

Transfers are next week, so we'll write e-mails on Thursday. Sorry to make you wait but that'll just give you more to time to think about me and miss me. HA just kidding. But seriously, I do miss you and love you and pray for you and daily feel the power of your prayers.

Love, Elder Barnes #12