November 24, 2014

This week we started teaching a guy named Carsten. The elders met him while tracting and referred him over to us since he's a young single adult. We met him, and he had a lot of questions for us. He wanted to know why there were so many different churches. He was very open and interested, but told us up front that he doesn't like organized religion because he thinks the people are too closed minded. We didn't have a lot of time to talk because we were making him stand on his porch in the cold with no shoes on (we couldn't go inside since we didn't have another girl with us), but we gave him a Book of Mormon and read the third paragraph of the introduction where it says that the Book of Mormon outlines God's plan for us, and shows us how to gain peace in this life. His countenance changed completely as we read that and he told us that he has been going through a really rough patch in his life, having just moved away from home and made a lot of changes. He told us that he has looked for happiness in a lot of different places and that he would try reading the Book of Mormon if it really could help him.

We went back to Carten's apartment yesterday and his roommate Aaron was there. We brought Kaiti, who is preparing to go on a mission soon and sat down in their living room. We asked both of them if they knew or felt that God loved them and neither of them did. They both said that they didn't really feel like He was present in their lives, but that they did know that sometimes bad things happen in our lives and that it isn't God's fault because he lets everyone have free will to make good or bad choices. We told Carsten and Aaron that this life is all about faith, and if they wanted to feel God in their lives more, they would have to start to exercise their faith by reading the scriptures and praying regularly. They both wholeheartedly committed to start reading the Book of Mormon, and it was just so amazing to see the little changes that were already starting to take place in their lives. I don't know if either of them will get baptized in the near future, but I do know that their lives have already been impacted in a huge way just because of those elders that knocked on their door. And I don't know why, but for some reason I feel like the two of them are really special. I feel like I've met them before. And I'm excited to see where things go with them.

Sister Boll