Monday, February 15, 2016

Transfer 16, week 5

Hey everyone! Its been another week and I'm so happy to be able to email you all again! I'd just like to share a few highlights of what has been happening.

We had a great Sabbath Day this week, a lot of stuff going on! We had our recent convert Ian today received the Priesthood, he will also be going to the temple this Wednesday and we get to go with him for his first time! So excited to go and do that. We also had the opportunity to have lunch over at our ward mission leaders house brother hatchard with another one of our recent converts Mike, it was such a great time and a well spent Sabbath day.

We had another wonderful opportunity this week to teach our recent convert Hala a new member lesson with one of the members. It was great and we can really see Hala is growing spiritually. She told us an experience she had with her family. She said when she went to go visit them recently everyone was drinking and she said she refused to drink because she has made a promise to Heavenly Father. She truly understands what it means to make a covenant with God, and that is so impressive for a new member. 

Overall it has been a great week! Hope everything is going good back home!

Love Elder Acker

Monday, February 8, 2016

Transfer 16, week 4

Hey everyone! Its been a great week here in the Evandale area and there is just a few things I would like to report but before all of that I just want to say congratulations to my wonderful Sister  Emily for receiving her mission call to Kentucky! What a cool place to serve! I've been bragging about her to everyone even though most of the people here have no idea where Kentucky is haha but everyone here does know KFC so I am proud to say that my sister will be having that original KFC, nah but really she is going to be an amazing missionary, I can just see it. Honestly, I think I have looked up to my little sister more than she has looked up to me. She is actually one of the biggest factors for me coming back to church and making it a great transition for me. She has already influenced my life and many others so I know she is going to bless the lives of the people in Kentucky. 

On another note, I am so physced to here that the Denver Broncos are National Champions!! So happy to here that, Peyton Manning definitely wen tout with a bang. I'm sure my dad and uncles are pretty stoked right now haha

So I would just like to share a few experiences we have had this week, we had the wonderful opportunity this week to teach anew investigator named Chris. He just recently moved here from China and he is staying at a members home. So the member invited us over and we were able to teach him about the restoration. He didn't have that much of a religious background, pretty much just like all the Chinese we teach but he seemed to take all the information quite well. It would be so good for him to find God especially at this time where he is beginning his life here in AUS. We look forward to the progress he will make.

We also saw a wonderful miracle form our recent convert Mike! Mike is great, the only problem he has with church is his work schedule which prevents him form coming every week but this Sabbath was just great, he had work off all day so he made the absolute best of it! He came to church which was great then after that we had a new member lesson with him with our Elders Quorum President. We have been working really well with our members as of late which is great to see. To add to it, Mike was on such a spiritual high that he decided to attend the afternoon session of church later that afternoon, talk about double the blessings! AND TO TOP IT ALL OFF we went with him to the fireside later that night with us which was great. I always love going to multi stake firesides because I always get to see old members that I love. But what was really weird about this particular night was that people were coming up to me and saying thank you for your service in our ward and telling me goodbye just in case we don't see each other again! This was like so weird for me, 6 more weeks ya'll. 

We also this week had a wonderful member lesson with a wonderful couple named the Spaldings this week. They are like my grandparents in the ward, love them so much. We had a great lesson with them about covenants and the Spirit was truly felt. We asked them a lot about covenants and it ended up being a time where they both were able to testify of the Marriage Covenant and express their love for each other, it was beautiful.

Thats pretty much the highlights from this week. Love you all!

Elder Acker