07/03/17 - Raleigh, North Carolina

Woohoo!! I love my mission!! :) It is such a blessing from God. Last Monday we ate dinner with a young man that was preparing to leave on his mission! He left on Wednesday and he will do great things. We ate with his family and gave him all the advice we could. I told him that some of the keys to a good mission are obedience, hard work, and joy. They change everything and are essential in inviting the Spirit! We went tracting for a few hours after dinner to exercise our faith that God has prepared people for us to receive! How true I know that to be! Tuesday we had to drive across the mission for a few hours to trade some cars around and get everything ready for another great transfer! We had fun and enjoyed every minute of the trip! Once we got back, we visited Yuliya and had a great lesson with her. She set her own baptismal date for July 22nd! She feels that she needs to be baptized in July so we are fasting and praying that she will make that day. We know that if she reads the Book of Mormon and prays daily, she will be there! We tracted again after teaching her and met a man named Sunil, he is from India and is very kind! We are hoping to return and teach him and his family sometime this week. We were able to go to a district meeting Wednesday morning and had a wonderful time. I especially loved all of the role plays! Some people say that there are aspects of missionary life that no one likes, but I can honestly say that I love it all! Following the meeting, we took a 5 hour road trip down to Fayetteville and back to move another car around and we were anxious to get back to start working again! We of course went tracting because that's what we do to find God's elect and we found a German woman by the name of Danny. She is atheist, but was very open to our message. We hope to meet her husband and help them both build their relationships with their Heavenly Father! Thursday was a very administratively heavy day. We were blessed to have time to tract in the morning from 10-12, but we then needed to go into the mission office to get some things accomplished. We spoke with President James for a while and planned out our zone conference instructions for this week! Our theme of the zone conference is "The Great Awakening" and I will be instructing on relying on the Lord through our covenants! Once we finished our work in the office, we had to run to a members home to use their Photoshop software. Elder Chiu designed a bookmark for the mission according to what President James wants. He got it looking real nice and we went back to the office the next day to meet with President again. He made a few changes so Elder Chiu fixed it all up and now we should be on our way to getting these bookmarks out to the mission! We visited an investigator by the name of Q that night and set up a time to come teach him and his family. He told us that his wife is a little stubborn, but we told him that we accept the challenge! We told him we were excited to see both him and his wife at church on Sunday and he said he liked the positive attitude! We had our Saturday meeting with President and picked some trainers for the next transfer. We are getting in 19 missionaries!!! It is going to be a huge group. There is a fastfood place here called Cookout and they sell watermelon milkshakes seasonally. They sell them from July-August and they are President James's favorite! We all got them after our meeting and he was so happy to have the first one of the season! They are pretty good, I have to admit! We went out to work after being fed well and made our first stop to the Rathavongsa family! The mother is a member, but her three sons are not. We have been working with them and teaching them for a few months now and they are going to be baptized this coming Saturday, July 8th! We are very excited for their decision to follow Christ and keep his commandments!! After meeting with them and preparing them a little more for the future events, we ate dinner with the Buday family. Mitzi the mother and Brady the son were baptized about a year and a half ago. Michael the father has been investigating all that time and has yet to make a decision. He is a wonderful man and is very kind! We love teaching him and the family. We had a great lesson about repentance and Michael was almost in tears, as were the rest of us! I not only love the Atonement of Jesus Christ, but I love being able to share it with others. That is what it was meant for, the benefit and salvation of others! After that spiritually moving visit, we met with Anthony! We have been teaching Anthony for just a few weeks now and he is very anxious to be baptized. We are helping them to get some divorce papers done so that they can be married and then for him, baptized! We watched the Restoration video with them and he just loved it. We love him, he's awesome. And today of course was the best day of the week because it was the Lord's day! We had many investigators come to church and they all thoroughly loved it! We ended up having 6 come, but were hoping for many more! Oh well, they will be there next week for sure! We had a great Asian dinner cooked especially for Elder Chiu and then we spent most of the night visiting people that our two Bishops asked us to visit. We made some great contact with less actives, new move-ins, you name it! We made sure to contact them quickly so that we could quickly report back to our Bishops of the progress of his ward members. We try to build relationships with our Bishops in any way possible! We love our wards and we love our area. This is the work of the Lord and we are beyond blessed to be a part of it. We do not deserve the daily privilege we have to work in His vineyard. But we are grateful for it and strive to accomplish His will in all things. I know that when we seek Him first, true joy is found.

Positively preaching,
Elder Shearer