Week 70

Mom,

I'm super glad you guys had a great week and a fun time in Gunlock!  Erin said she loved it!

I'm glad that all the boys had fun hunting and driving the rhinos and things like that! I miss that stuff! I'm glad you guys were safe! Hope Stevo’s game goes well this week. So this week we again had a good amount of meetings and things we had to do. We did go on an exchange with Elder Crismon and Egan and that was a lot of fun and was a great learning exchange. I went with Elder Crismon and we just talked about missionary work and Preach My Gospel basically the whole exchange and it was awesome! Elder Crismon was
here in Hunter's Creek when I was here before so we became really good friends during that time. We were able to teach a lot which was great! One really cool experience I had this week though was we were over
teaching a recent convert and his little step brothers were there who were 6 & 8 so we invited them to sit in with us. At the end of the lesson I thought it would be a great opportunity to teach the little kids how to pray so they could pray on their own later on in their life. So I taught the 8yr old how to pray and he said an awesome, heartfelt, sincere prayer that nearly brought me to tears! I then asked the little boy how he felt after he prayed and all he said was, "Loved" We left the house and I couldn't help but just ponder how simple the gospel is. When we pray, when we read our scriptures, when we go to church, when we go to the temple, when we go home teaching, we should feel "Loved" Heavenly Father always has his loving hands extended, we just have to reach out ourselves most the time to feel it more. It was so awesome to see that even a 8 year old boy who doesn't even know the gospel could tell that the feelings he received while praying were feelings of love. Another great thing that happened was that we had a less active lady who we both didn't expect to see just show up to church! As she was partaking of the sacrament you could tell she was pondering her life and the things she wanted to change. You could tell it was a spiritual experience for her. I mean it was a spiritual experience just watching her. She's committed to get back on track to come each Sunday and read her scriptures everyday and we're so excited to start working with her!

I love you Mom!! Thank you for EVERYTHING!! You're the best!

Love Elder Ashworth