October 5th, 2001

Ola Irmaos and Irmas!

This week has been exciting to say the least.  I have lots of good news and stories.  First off we've found our Halloween costumes.  They were in our closet.  I'm going to be a storm trooper and Elder Dearinger is going to be Pikachu.  They're pretty good costumes.  Perhaps we'll take some pictures.  I sure hope I'm still here for Halloween because I don't want to miss our 3 baptisms coming up on the 22nd!  Yes I know it's a miracle.  I will tell you more about these in a second.

General Conference was amazing of course.  It was very inspired.  I can tell you that it is a great thing to have non-member watch.  I have witnessed it first hand.  So we watched the first session of conference with some Less Active members.  I noticed that it seemed to have a theme of personal revelation.  All of conference did.  As well as missionary work (so I challenge you all to help out your missionaries and make their lives easier and things happen.  Our Mission President has been highly focused on Member Work the last couple meetings.  We need to work with Members every chance we get).  But the T's have a non-member living in their house.  He watched with us and started asking questions.  It was good for us as you can imagine.  We watched the second session at a part member family.  I talked about them last week.  The L family.  M L is in her 80's and is having health problems.  So we go and do service for her every week.  She lives with her daughter M (same name)  Who is not a member.  Yes it's confusion I know.  And M Jr.'s niece lives there too.  She is 9 and her name is M (different name) and not a member.  She is T's daughter.  So we watched with all of them and T who was the golden referral we talked about.  Afterwards we ate dinner with them.  They loved conference they ate it up.  Especially T.  But we had to teach another appointment so we had to run after dinner.  

Then we attended the priesthood session which was focused on missionary work.  I really hope that lit a fire under you all because we're pretty pumped up out here.  I can tell you that there is nothing better than serving a mission.  The young men there were pretty excited too.  But on Sunday we went and watched with some members in the morning.  Our ward mission leader.  We ate a fabulous lunch with them  Ribs.  Absolutely delicious.  They left the TV on between sessions and up pops a special on Elder Norton.  Now Elder Norton was not Elder then, but he was in my MTC Zone.  He became the new Zone Leader after we left.  Great Elder and it was surprising and cool to see him on TV.  Probably not as exciting for you. He should be leaving the MTC this next week.

The Sunday second session we watched at the T's again.  Afterwards we rushed to teach the L.  They watched all the sessions and they were really touched.  Theresa really love Bednar.  Now we hadn't taught about the angel Moroni yet so she was very interested in that.  (Side note I don't know about you all, but I sure thought of my Mother during his talk on family history).  We taught  the first lesson to all of them.  The First Vision story was so powerful.  They all committed to being baptized on the 22.  Only M and M are in our ward, but T is getting baptized too.  The spirit was so strong you could cut it.  I have never felt the spirit like I have when someone realizes for themselves that it is true.

I'll spread out the miracles here.  I guess this is still a miracle though. So the early weeks of my mission we had problems with having dinner appointments.  This week was the opposite.  We had 2 dinner appointments multiple nights this week.  It was crazy and I don't know how it happened.  I have been so full all week.  One night 3 people called us asking if we were going to come to dinner that night.  We accepted most of them because they were all part member families.  I had some crazy connections with members this week though.  Last Wednesday night we went to dinner at the S's house. After we ate Brother S pulls out his Mission Scrapbook.  Which isn't too weird I mean we remind him of his mission.  So he opens it and points to a picture.  And lo and behold I'm staring at Ray Sudweeks (my uncle) in the MTC.  Brother S served in Korea.  My Uncle Ray was working at the MTC while he was there.  The next night we go to the C's for dinner. And they used to live in Eagle Mountain, Utah.  So I told them that my cousins lived there and we discovered that my Uncle Rick was their Bishop.  We talked about more than that, but it was crazy that two nights in a row people knew my dad's siblings.  She sent my Aunt a message on Facebook while we were there.

Next miracle.  Yesterday we received a referral from the church for a free Bible.  So we went to give it to C.  He accepted it very graciously and invited us in to teach him.  First off people don't just say, "Teach me".  So we went in and taught half of the first lesson.  He accepted to be baptized on the 22nd.  He invited us to come teach his family later this week.  That was the craziest most exciting moment of the week.  There are people ready for the gospel and we don't even know it.  All because he saw on his phone online that he could get a free Bible.  

I'm sorry that this is so long it's just been an awesome week.  We're working hard and I hope you all are too.  Keep up the good work.  The gospel is true and I'll see you in two.

Love you too,

Elder Sudweeks

[And he sent this addition]
Oh on Monday Elder Dearinger had a leadership training meeting so I was sent to be a Spanish Elder In Woodstock.  It was a pretty fruitful day.  We found quite a few people to teach.  I taught lessons in and contacted in Spanish.  It was intense.  My Spanish is terrible.  I have a hard time not using Portuguese words or pronunciation.  I got to talk in Portuguese to my companions all day though. It was a good experience.

Oh I also forgot to mention that our investigator D got married on Saturday so he should be getting baptized next week!  The work is moving forth and the area is on fire.