Week 10

  Axel Lara, Newest member of the Frederick Branch

Another crazy week!

The highlight of the week was definitely on Saturday, the Baptism of Axel Lara. Axel is the first member of his family to join the Church, what an amazing example he is setting!! He had his girlfriend's dad baptize him. His girlfriend goes to BYU-Idaho so was on Facetime watching the whole thing, which was so cool! Everybody there felt the Spirit so strongly. We asked his dad, Carlos, to give the closing prayer, and he cried during the entire thing and gave one of the most beautiful prayers I have ever heard. Carlos wants to take the lessons from us, and Axel is going to be such a help with many of our Investigators. I'm so proud of him. Axel has taken a huge step on the path to Christ, and set an example for his ENTIRE family to see. He will be a Missionary for years to come with his family, and I'm so grateful for the opportunity to know him. Yesterday I got the opportunity to be in the circle to give him the Holy Ghost and the Aaronic Priesthood, which were amazing experiences also.

This Guy is so AWESOME!!!

This week has been tough as far as meeting people that are super interested. We've had a lot of people that were tough, either because they were drunk, had heard a lot of anti, or were Jehovah Witnesses. It's been a lot of people trying to tell us what we believe and what we are doing wrong, and really has been hard to work with!

We didn't get to see David or Wilber this week, both of them were gone everytime we went over! But now with Axel, we will be taking him with us to a lot of lessons, and his testimony will help us so much, especially because Wilber is close to the same age! We have been teaching an elderly lady named Carmen Lopez, and that is going really well, she agreed that if she finds out this is true, she would love to be baptized! We didn't get to see Rosi and Virgilio much either, but we will be talking a lot about Marriage with them this week!

On Valentine's Day, we will be having another Marriage/Baptism from the Frederick South Elders. It's so cool because I had never seen that before, but now have seen it twice in the last few weeks! This time only the girl is a non-member, the guy is a Member! So they will be getting married and then she will be getting baptized right after. We will be bringing Rosi and Virgilio and hopefully they see the importance of marriage and baptism from witnessing this.

As far as the branch goes, yesterday we had the highest attendance in the history of the Branch. 118 people! My first week there were maybe 40 there, so it is definitely growing. We have been working so hard with Less Active Members, visiting them and helping them come, and it really is working. Hector, a 12 year old from Honduras, has become one of my super good friends here and has started coming back to church. Him and his mom went less active because his dad died 5 days after the entire family was baptized. It is such a sad story, but it is cool that he is coming back, and we are trying to get his mom to want to come back also!

I am the Piano/Organ player for the ward, everyone knows me as the Piano player and calls me that. Also, since none of the Hispanics can really pronounce my last name, I'm mostly known as Elder Levite (like the tribe)!

Last night we got the prompting to go to house of a Former Investigator, and he let us in immediately and we had a conversation with the entire family and will be seeing them again on Tuesday for Dinner! It is so cool to see the Promptings of the Holy Ghost in leading us to where we need to go.

I'm so grateful for all of the support and for all of the prayers. Thank you!

- Elder Leavitt

I think we may have a future Missionary here!