10-18

Hello Everyone!
This week has been good! We are seeing lots of miracles and cant wait to see more!
Haha, we had a good appointment with one of our investigators named Elizabeth. She is an awesome girl. Elder Terry and I taught her about having Faith in Jesus Christ this week and the spirit was strong. At one point we were talking to her about how she needed to read her scriptures. She said, "Well guys... I just don't like reading. I just don't get as much out of it as I do when you come over and teach me.. so I don't read." So I shared for like 10 minutes the story of the wise man and the foolish man (she's not familiar with biblical stories at all so it was all new to her.) I made it pretty clear that having a "firm foundation" would be very "wise" and that not having a firm one would be "foolish". After explaining I looked straight at her and asked, "Elizabeth, would you like to build your house on the rock or on the sand?" She sat back in her seat and began to ponder & all the sudden I discerned what she was thinking - - haha, in her head she was thinking 'hmm, It would be fun to live on the beach...' & right then she said, "well, I would still live on the sand BUT, I would - if a flood came - just have a friend that lived on the rocks so I could get the best of both worlds." I was like NOOOOO - - we are talking spiritual here! haha we talked about it for a few minutes and then she said "wait - I can't rely on you missionaries for everything - I need to read this stuff for myself!" We were like "YES!" We told her that was personal revelation that she got straight from Heavenly Father and she opened up her Book of Mormon and wrote in the front cover "GOD SPEAKS TO ME". How cool is that! She is going to get baptized soon - we are working on it, but I am so excited for her.... haha, she calls us her "little prophets". lol
We had our stake conference this weekend and it was so great! Elder Cordova an area 70 and Elder Gong from the first presidency of the 70 came and spoke. (if you remember, Elder Gong spoke this past General Conference - the asian dude.) Elder Gong talked about a story about a chinese kid named Ping who could grow amazing flowers of every size. Well one day the emperor was having a flower contest and gave everyone in the town seeds to grow the flowers - well Ping took his seeds home and began to water them and came back and nothing was growing .. as he kept up on them still nothing happened. Well at the judging time the emperor called everyone in. Ping saw so many contestants with flowers of all different shapes and sizes. But when everyone took them to the emperor his face just seemed to frown... Ping then took his empty pot up to the emperor and the emperors face was so joyful. He then told Ping that he was so proud of him - He had given everyone in the land baked seeds and Ping was the only honest one there. WOW, how cool is that- we need to be honest!
Well, out of time, I love you sooo much! Stay safe and Honest! -- Love, ELDER PATRICK McBRIDE