Week 79

Mom!

I Love emailing you every week!! It helps me a lot! Our next transfer is next week! Crazy!!

So this week was pretty amazing! First off, T’s baptism was such a spiritual meeting! We had a man named Brother S speak and it was awesome! Brother S was the absolute difference maker in T’s conversion. We had been working with T for about 4 months and it wasn't till Brother S came over and bore his testimony of the prophet Joseph that T began to realize the significance of this message and the potential it had to bring him that peace and happiness that he was looking for. A man named Brother K who is a member in the Eustis ward came to baptize him which was also special. Brother K is T's grandkids other Grandpa from the other side so it was neat. Brother and Sister K continued to say "I can't believe this is actually happening" haha because he's been being worked with for over 5 years! I just feel extremely blessed that I was able to be In this area to see him finally become a member of the one true church. After sacrament meeting he stayed after for like an hour just talking to members and telling them how excited he was to be a member now and how he knows it's the one true church! It was so cool to watch :)

So one thing I have been noticing lately is that I keep meeting people who have "hectic lives" and have trials come up over and over and over again. Because of these things they assume that they just don't have enough time to come to church and read their scriptures and sincerely pray, yet they continue to wonder why things aren't calming down for them or getting better. It always makes me chuckle when I meet these people because the answer is so simple... Get your priorities strait. Take 10 min a day to read, get into the habit of praying on your knees every morning and night, take 3 hours, or even 1 HOUR out of your week to come to church and watch things take a complete turn for the better in your life. We all obviously know that just by living the Gospel it doesn't mean that all our hectic times and trials will be taken away, but it sure does help us get through them in a much more calm and fulfilling way. We had an investigator that we got to drop last week because he just wasn't keeping commitments. He was "All Talk" as I like to say. Every Time we went over he'd talk and talk and talk about how excited he was to come to church and that he'd find time to read and pray this week. But every week, we'd get a text of something that came up that made it so that he was to busy or to tired to come to church. So we finally just showed up to his house and I basically said "There's over 200 members of our ward who have just as busy if not busier lives then you who make it to church each week, so it comes down to making solutions rather then excuses". He wasn't expecting that, but deep down I knew he understood and agreed. I've found that we as human beings are professional excuse makers. I do it all the time, but that's the point of this life, is to overcome the natural man. And the only way we can overcome the natural man is by relying and APPLYING the atonement to our lives. Daily repentance is so key to constant progression. Mosiah 3:19 "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father." The only way we can become a saint and meek, humble, patient, and full of love is "through the atonement of Christ the Lord", and the only way we use the atonement is by repentance. So one of my goals for this year is to repent every single day. I know that as I do so, and as we all do so, that we will be more aware of the small things we could easily fix as well as the big things, we will see ourselves gradually become better and stronger, and we will become much happier with ourselves and much more converted to the great blessing and opportunity of repentance. But like I said before, and I'm sure we all know this, we have to have to have to rely more fully on our Savior Jesus Christ.

"I need thee ev’ry hour;

Stay thou nearby.

Temptations lose their pow’r

When thou art nigh;

I need thee, oh, I need thee;

Ev’ry hour I need thee!

Oh, bless me now, my Savior;

I come to thee!."

Hymn #98

I miss you lots Mom☺️❤️❤️☺️ Thanks so so so much for all you do for me!! You're the best!! I miss you mom! Have a great week!

Love Your Son Elder Ashworth❤️❤️❤️

On the Road... Again

Don't tell President, we found a ping pong table at one of the chapels we went to for
interviews so we set it up and played a couple games! It was our last set of interviews,
we had been to this same meeting already 9 times, so we justified it pretty well ;) Haha

Brought Lyndon Mauigoa out with us to some lessons!

Got on the bikes Saturday morning and it felt soooo good!
We probably rode about 10 miles and we found some awesome new people!
We found a guy who hasn't been active for a while, but he wants to come back
and he has a wife and two kids who are open to be baptized which is awesome!

Most importantly,  baptism! Such an awesome weekend!