Monday, October 19, 2015

Week 46 Visiting the D.C. Temple


Even though it is starting to get way too cold, life in Shenandoah Valley continues to stay incredibly busy, and the miracles keep on coming!


We have been praying for people to teach for quite awhile now. As we have searched for people to teach, we came across an 18 year old named Jerry who we just met a few weeks ago. Last night, exactly 2 weeks after we met him, we had another lesson with him and in these 2 weeks I have never seen such an amazing change in a person! He started out with problems of being addicted to weed and cigarettes, not knowing much about God at all, and is now making efforts to completely change his life around. Jerry is down to only 1 cigarette a day and is done with smoking weed. Seeing his change and his testimony of Jesus Christ has been so absolutely amazing. He is currently on date for baptism on the 14th of November.

This week I got to go on 2 exchanges with other Elders in the Zone, both of which are just in their first few weeks of their missions! Sometimes it feels like I'm still in the first few weeks too, but then I realize it's almost been a year! The time has flown by. It was so amazing to be with these awesome missionaries. My first exchange I got to go back into a Spanish area for a few days and I loved it and realized how much I miss speaking Spanish. The second exchange was in my own area and I was with Elder Stafford, the Elder that has a stutter. He said that before his mission, he would stutter every single word. But out here on his mission, every single day he is getting better and better and he stutters maybe 1 out of 5 words now. It is such a humbling thing to see and I'm so grateful for his amazing example of serving through hardships!


I got the opportunity this week to go to the beautiful D.C. temple, one of Elder Mumm's converts was going through for the first time. I absolutely love the temple. It is so extremely beautiful inside and out, and I'm so grateful for the opportunity I have to be able to visit it while on my mission. Such a beautiful and amazing place to be!



Winchester Zone continues to do absolutely amazing! What was one of the slowest zones is absolutely tearing it up! This week we issued a challenge of baptismal invitations, inviting everybody on the streets to be baptized and it was so cool! We had 81 in the Zone this week! 81 people that were invited to be baptized. What a remarkable accomplishment, all thanks to the wonderful missionaries around us!


From Elder Durrant's talk about ponderizing scriptures, I'd like to send a scripture each week that I will be ponderizing! I'm so excited to see the blessings of ponderizing scriptures.

Weekly Ponderize Scripture: Mosiah 4:27  "And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength. And again, it is expedient that he should be diligent; that thereby he might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order."

Thank you for everything!

- Elder Leavitt

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