Elder Savage's Mission Blog: Elder Hamilton of the Seventy tags along on a lesson!

Hey Everyone! Howsit? It's going pretty well over here. There is sort of a drought here, but it's raining most nights now, so it's better.

Tuesday and Saturday were the best days of the week-- the others were a little rough, but the two days made up for it. On Tuesday we saw Jade again, who we first met about 10 weeks ago and have only had a couple of lessons with because she was finishing up her school. We were able to see her again, and we took the Herberts (Lee and Matt), the couple that she knows super well, and it was a good lesson. We were talking about more of the plan of salvation. We basically just talked about the spirit world and that was it, because she had a lot of questions and Jade's mom (who grew up JW so she has very different views from ours) kept interupting and she talked a lot haha. It was late so we had to go. But we could tell that Jade's concerns weren't really resolved, (she's had the same questions for months now), which is basically, “ If I die tomorrow what's going to happen?", and “Am I going to go to hell if I don't fully repent?" So we could tell those questions were still bothering her, and we set up a time to see her again on Saturday. She went to a YSA dance on Friday night with Sister Lee, which was awesome because she got to know some more members, and then she spent the night at the Herberts. So we went there Saturday morning and Matt was there but his wife wasn't, and Sister Lee is awesome but she can talk like nobody else haha. So Matt was just like okay, I'm gonna play videogames on the computer, but you can still teach Jade. So we did, and it was nice because no one was interrupting her. It was just us listening and teaching the rest of the plan of salvation, and it was cool because when we finished explaining the kingdoms of glory she let out a sigh of relief and just said "That's fair." We were praying that her concern would be resolved, and that the Spirit could teach her, and it definitely did. So that made us pretty happy.

On Monday, we got a call from the AP's saying that Elder Hamilton of the Seventy (he's in the Africa South East Area Presidency) was going to come with us to a lesson in our area on Saturday at 3:30pm. So they told us to meet him at 3:00 and meet with an investigator and stress the importance of the lesson, since it's not every day a General Authority goes out with missionaries. So we kept it in mind the whole week, but it just wasn't happening. We had been praying the whole week that it would be a good lesson, that it could be worth Elder Hamilton's limited time, but every investigator wasn't available at that time. So we were like okay, it's going to have to be a recent convert. But Saturday morning came and the only one available was Oarabile, the 16 year old who comes teaching with us all the time, and we had just taught him recently, but there was no other option. The plan was to take Oarabile to a lesson with another recent convert at 1:30, and then go meet Elder Hamilton and take him to see Oarabile with us. But we got a call at 1:15 from Elder Hamilton and he says "I'm at the McDonald's!" And in my mind I was thinking...you're two hours early, but actually this works out perfectly! So I said okay, give us 5 minutes, and we picked him up and then drove and picked up Oarabile and taught a lesson to Sister Welhemina. She and her 19 year old daughter were baptized earlier this year, but the daughter is sort of on the path of apostasy. The daughter wasn't at home, so Welhemina was talking about it and asking what she can do about Esther. She was crying and Elder Hamilton was able to help a ton! He has raised 6 kids so obviously he could relate to her much more than we could, and the Spirit was with him so strong! (It kind of inspired me to be better) and so we listened. He gave some counsel, even Oarabile was able to pitch in, and we read a little from the scriptures and comforted Sister Welhemina. At the end Elder Hamilton gave her a really cool blessing and blessed her with knowledge that Esther would be alright, and that even Welhemina's other son would be taught the gospel and have the opportunity to accept it. So overall it was just an awesome lesson. I learned a lot from him and his example. He is the nicest coolest guy ever! So yeah, it was an awesome day haha.

Ok well, I'm out of time. But I'll just leave with my testimony that I know the Spirit is the greatest gift we can receive in this life, that it helps in every aspect of our lives, and it's fundamental in missionary work. Thanks for the emails and encouraging words. Love you all!

Talk to you soon.

Elder Savage