Elder Calvin B. Smith email 08/30/2010

Dear Family,

We had a great week this week. We had the baptism of Mary Owen on Saturday and she was confirmed by her husband Sunday. They are so excited to be united in the temple in a year! In my last email I think I said that he had been trying to get her to join the church for 30 years. I was wrong, it was 40 years. Brother Owen was so happy to have his wife join him as a member of Christ's church. He could hardly contain his joy at the baptism while he was standing in the water with her. Sister Owen is so happy and is excited to continue learning more and more from the scriptures.

On Sunday we had a missionary oriented Sacrament meeting that we set up. We had President McConkie come and talk to our ward leadership in PEC about how they can get the ward excited about missionary work and get them involved. President McConkie was also the concluding speaker in our sacrament meeting. He gave a great talk that really pumped up one of our investigators. He talked about how different we are from other churches. Other churches talk about revelation as if it was a past event and that we need no more word from God. He explained that he had several sons, and that he has had to teach each of his sons the same lessons of life. He did not just teach his first two sons and expect the rest of his children to learn the same lesson from the other two sons. President likened the latter to the philosophy of the rest of Christendom. They think that God has spoken and that we need no more of his word. President McConkie also talked about how one of the greatest blessings we have as members of Christ’s church is the gift of the holy ghost and how we get to read the scriptures with the gift of the holy ghost. He likened it to reading a book in the dark vs with the lights on. We are both reading the same book, but members of the church of Jesus Christ can see much more clearly because they have the gift of the Holy Ghost to guide them and give them personal revelation.

I was so excited to hear President McConkie speak in sacrament meeting. After church one of our investigators called us up and told us that he is ready to be baptized when ever we are ready to set up a time. He leaves with Wednesday for Washington state and he will be back in 12 days, so we scheduled the baptism for the Saturday after he comes back. After church we went and saw some one who had committed to come to church but who did not.

Then we taught a lesson at a member’s home. Because of the meal policy (on weekends we have to have a nonmember present at member dinners) they had invited a friend to the dinner. The friend is very interested in learning about the church and right now she does not have a church of her own. We invited her to the movie event at the church we were having that night and she came. She really liked the movie and is excited to be meeting with us again this week. The movie night was a success. We were able to get about 70 members there and 5-8 nonmembers there. Everyone really liked it and we had refreshments afterwards. We just wish we were able to have more nonmembers there. The movie we watched at the church was the full length movie called “Joseph Smith, Prophet of the restoration.” We hooked up a projector in the chapel and lowered the projector screen so it looked really good. We hooked the sound into the chapel speakers so it was just like a movie theater, but better. Everyone really felt the wonderful spirit that attends that movie and having the event in the chapel only added to that sacred experience, many were in tears. We have been issued a copy of a DVD with many of the Mormon messages found on youtube. We played the Mormon messages before we played the movie and that really created a great environment to start with.


We had a great week!

Love,
Elder Smith