41st Epistle from Elder Kaleb Erickson serving in Brooklyn, NY

Teaching with Authority               written June 10, 2013

This was a cool week. It starts with some back-story. There is a guy here named Efrain. He is an investigator, but his brother lives here and the brother is a member. He's actually the ward correlator. But Efrain has been investigating the church for some two years now. He goes to another church too and feels a connection with that church. Elder Kitchen and his companion had been working with Efrain, but weren't getting anywhere, so they decided to take a break from teaching him. The ward had a party for Mother's Day about two weeks ago and they invited Efrain to come and play the guitar for the talent show. He came and he had a blast playing for the ward.

Last Sunday, fast Sunday, he decided to get up and bare his testimony. He said that he felt something different while he was playing the guitar and has decided that he wants to learn more about the scriptures. This is great news. Elder Kitchen felt that Elder Rodgers and I should take over teaching him this time. So we talked to him and set up a time to meet. We met with him on Wednesday and he was really having a rough day. He had lost his job recently and was struggling to find motivation to keep going in life. But for some reason he really felt like he needed to talk with us that day. I told him that the spirit was guiding him to us because we had something that could help him in his life. And that something was the Gospel of Christ. If he began to live the Gospel of Christ, he would find the happiness and the motivation that he's looking for. He wasn't quite convinced, but I told him that he would never know if it works unless he tried it. He agreed to read a chapter in the Book of Mormon and to pray about whether he should continue with us or not. He said that if he gets an answer, then he will continue learning, but if he doesn't get an answer, he's going to stop meeting with us. We really put this one in the Lord's hands.

Fast forward to Sunday. We get a call that he is going to be at the church in 15 minutes and wants to talk with us. So we head on over and happened to find a member who was willing to meet with Efrain with us. We sat down and I asked him how it went. He said that he read the chapter and that he really felt good about it. So he decided to read it again. He still felt good, but he was worried about whether the feelings were from God or from the devil. So he decided to pray about it. Because God wouldn't lie in a prayer. And the good feeling stayed. As a result of this experience, he told us that he is willing to start doing more to progress and is willing to work towards baptism. He still had a few doubts, but hopefully we'll be able to answer those questions as we continue to meet with him. It was still an awesome experience. At the end of that lesson, he told us that he is impressed by the authority that we teach with. I've never had an investigator say that I teach with authority before, so that was a cool moment. The member started telling him about how missionaries are called of God and given specific authority to teach just like that. I feel hopeful about Efrain. I think that he is on his way to improving his life and if he can just learn to walk by faith instead of sight, he will definitely get baptized and make a great member of this church.

In other events from the week, we had our movie night on Friday. Unfortunately that was also a night of a giant tropical storm. So it wasn't super well attended. We talked to a few members and they said they weren't coming because they were afraid to leave their house. Two families still came though and it was fun to watch Tangled in Spanish. I still think that movies are funnier in Spanish. We're planning to watch Finding Nemo next, so hopefully the weather will work with us next time.

Also in surprising news, our Bishop decided to move randomly. He hadn't been to church in two weeks and we hadn't been able to get in contact with him, so we were worried about him. But it turns out he is now living on Long Island. Commence speculation on the new bishop and changes in the ward. It should be an interesting next couple of weeks.

Hope you're all doing well! Love you!

Elder Erickson