Succesfully Rebuilding

Dear Family,

     Thanks for all the love and support from you guys!  I hope that you got the pictures on the email last week and were able to put some faces to the names I've been talking about. haha

     This week in good old Eden Prairie was pretty good for us.  We're still kind of in a rebuilding stage our teaching pool and trying hard to do that.  Things are going well and the Lord's definitely providing for us.  We have a few part member families that we've been working with here in the ward.  One of the members is Brother Dave Barnes.  He's a severely less active brother that Elder White and his other companion stopped by and started working with a little while before I got here.  No one in the ward except his home teacher, who's in the bishopric, knows who he is.  We've been over about 4 times since I've been here and have gotten him to read his Book of Mormon again.  This last week his 25 year old non-member daughter wanted to meet with us.  She was interested in learning because she said that she's seen a change in her dad since we've been coming over and has seen him reading and was curious.  She's now a new investigator of ours and has a lot of potential.  The best part is that both she and her dad came to church yesterday.  Despite the fact that she got off work at 6:30 a.m. they still came and sat next to us.  We were so happy to see them there and for Brother Barnes it was his first time back in a church since his baptism almost 40 years ago!   It was incredible that all we had to do was be there to extend an invitation to him and the Lord took care of the rest.  It all started with an invitation to let us teach him, to an invitation to read The Book of Mormon, and to come back to church.  He told us after sacrament meeting that he needs to get his suit tailored now and that we'd see them next week.  The spirit works on people and all we have to be is be the instrument and mouth piece.  It's amazing!

     Like I said we're still trying to build up our teaching pool here and will be continuing that effort this next week.  We're working with a couple other part member families and will keep trying to help them.  There's a couple potential that we have found over the past few weeks just from knocking on doors after our dinner appointments.  They both seem really solid and would be great to actually be able to teach.  One was a former body builder who has won MR. MN 2005.  This guys huge but one of the nicest guys I've ever met.  We've gone over and talked with him while he's been in his garage a couple of times for like 30 minutes each time.  The last time we talked about what we do as missionaries and that whole deal.  He couldn't believe first of all that we were not actually from any town even close to here Chaska.  Once we explained where we were from, how long we're here for, and what we do as missionary work goes he was just amazed.  It was even funnier when Elder White told him that we'd only known each other for 2 weeks too.  He didn't see how it was possible that we could just live with a complete stranger we never knew before for any extended amount of time. haha  He's really interested now in learning more about what we believe and we're hoping we can do that sometime this week.  He's really busy.  When he's not working he's at the gym, and when he's not doing either of those he's working on his '67 Chevelle that he's built all by hand.  The best part is that his neighbors right across the street are some way solid members that they're kind of friends with already.  Hopefully I'll have more to update with Adrian for next week.

     So the end of this week is "The Missionary Super Bowl" more commonly known as General Conference and we're pretty excited!  Really being able to hear modern scripture and counsel coming from inspired men that commune with God is such a blessing.  It's our unique message to the world that just like in times of old there are apostles and a prophet called  just as Moses, Noah, Nephi, and Moroni to help all of us as His children in our individual lives.  No other church has that and I feel like I should have appreciated that more when I was at home.  One of the people that was not so excited to have us knock on his door this week said something to try and bash with us that really made my testimony grow and for me to appreciate the fact of modern revelation.  He told us that all we need was Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and that we really shouldn't read anything else.  In his attempt to try and argue about The Book of Mormon he also discredited the entire Old Testament and a majority of the books in the New Testament as unimportant and irrelevant.  Even though this guys was an idiot I refrained from saying that too him because we as a society don't generally enjoy that, and just felt bad that he really thinks that God, our Eternal Father and Almighty Creator, would limit His power and knowledge that He wanted us to know as His children to the 4 Gospels and that's it.  It made me think of the scripture in 2 Nephi 29 not only the verses that say "And because my words shall hiss forth—many of the Gentiles shall say: A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible. But thus saith the Lord God: O fools" But also the verses where it says that "there are more nations than one. . . and [the Lord] speaks the same words unto one nation like unto another".  That's something I know that's true.  I know that God loves all His children equally and that The Book of Mormon is true and is evidence of that.  That Joseph Smith was a true and living prophet to restore Christ's church and authority to the Earth and that President Thomas S. Monson is the living prophet for us in this dispensation.  It made me even more excited for conference after talking with that guy!

     I'm glad that the sealing went well.  That's so cool!  Hopefully everyone going to DC has fun too.  Speaking of which thanks for the email and pictures updating me on the crazy things going on there Nick.  I did end up getting that email 3 times I just for got to comment on it I guess.  I'm just glad it wasn't worse and you guys are doing alright out there.  I'm excited to here that little Raylee's actually being blessed on what should be considered a national holiday on October 9th! ;) haha It's a very momentous day. haha

     Well I look forward to being able to talk to you all again and here more about the adventures that everyone's having haha.  I love and miss all of you!

Love, Elder Craft