Week 89 Another Great Week!

Hey everyone! This was another great week here in Ellicott City! Besides the 115 degree weather with humidity...

First off, Mark Martin is now on date! He's getting baptized on September 3rd. It's been amazing to see his progress since the first day that we met him. He was originally contacted by two Elders in downtown Baltimore who gave his information to us. As he's been meeting with us, he's opened up more and more each time. He has some social anxiety and other social disorders, but has now met so many of the members he has really opened up to everyone around him. At first, it was hard to find him a ride to church, but as time went on he was able to work with his family to get a ride every week. 2 weeks ago he just showed up in Elders Quorum after we hadn't seen him in a few weeks, and wanted to continue learning! So we started teaching him again and he has now committed to be baptized! This week as we were preparing for one of the lessons, we felt prompted to talk about Prophets, Obedience, and Tithing. He doesn't have a job right now, so we felt like we should go over self-reliance and helping him see how the money in the church is used so that we could really see where his intent was in meeting with us. It was such a great experience to see how the lesson turned out, you could tell that he really did understand that even though the church could provide resources like Job Employment Specialists, they don't just have hand-outs for everyone, and there are certain things we must do in the Lord's Church. It was such a great experience! 

This was a great week with Dennis Danieli as well! Dennis came to church on Sunday for the first time!! His mom took him and she was going to stay but then got called into work right at that time! But his parents have made so much progress because at the beginning they were very stand-offish. This week we continued through the story of Abinadi with Dennis, reading through Mosiah 17 and 18 about how Alma establishes the Church. Dennis loves the Book of Mormon more than any 16 year old kid I've ever met! It was also great in church because Dennis sat in between Elder Fisher and I....3 red heads in a row!! He loved it and will be going to the Philadelphia Temple Open House with our Stake President and his family!

Mary Cole is still one of the most amazing women I've ever met! After getting baptized 4 weeks ago, she has continued to do SO much in her progression in the Gospel. Tomorrow she'll be taking her husband, son, and granddaughter to Philadelphia to tour the Temple! This will be a great opportunity for David, her husband, to really show his interest in learning more. We'll be showing him Meet the Mormons later this week! That movie has been a huge resource in helping people see how normal we really are! I'm excited to hear about how Mary's experience is! And then on Wednesday, Mary is taking Tina, one of her friends that has been coming to church lately, down to the Visitors Center at the Washington DC Temple! Tina will be getting baptized in just a few weeks as well!! Mary meets with Bishop Moffat this week as well to get her temple recommend and she is doing Family History to pick a name to go to the Temple with.

As for those others that have been recently baptized, Francis is doing well! Since his job change, his schedule has opened up so that he is now free on Sunday. Marcia Threatt continues to do well also! She got baptized the week after Mary, and she is also preparing for the Temple. She's one of the funniest people I've ever met and always says "I never thought God's plan would have me become a Mormon...but I did it anyways!" She's so great and we feel so privileged to know her!

The Selby family is also picking a date to go to the temple and do Baptisms for the Dead! Since the Baptism in June, they've been back in forth between Fredericksburg and here, so we've only had the chance to see them a few times. But we met with them yesterday and Grayson, Sarah, and Sydney, are SO excited to get the chance to go down to the Temple! They're still one of my favorite families I've met on my mission!

Back in March, there was a man that we were teaching named Kunle Omisore. He is from Nigeria and had some amazing experiences meeting members of the Church, and finally referred himself through the Church Headquarters because he wanted to meet with missionaries. We had some amazing visits, but then he left for Nigeria for a few months....but this week he is back!! We finally got ahold of him and he was so excited to hear from us again, we'll be meeting up this week with him! 

Well, I hope that everyone is doing well! Thank you again for the constant support and love!

- Elder Leavitt

We Finally hit the "Double Digit" Mark this week in our
 Countdown for Chandler to come home!! So exciting!!!