Elder Brock DeLuca: The Book of Mormon is the New Covenant

This week was saaaweeet!! On Monday, we went to pick up Spanish Elder Allen who was a travel assistant for the last two weeks of his mission. After we got him we had a nice dinner with the Svedins and they are super missionary-minded! Sister Svedin is going to invite her friend over to hear a lesson from us! Oh yeah, and they gave me a jar of homemade or processed whatever you wanna call it, honey!! I seriously love honey so much it is crazy. I eat it ever day!! After that we went back over to the halfway house place that we were at a few months ago. It's been a while, but I wanted THE Elder AllenS to meet Angel. Turns out Angel said he wants to know all he can about the Book of Mormon! YES PLEASE!! So, we are planning on teaching him again. I'll keep you posted. He came to church yesterday, too! After Angel, we went to go by a referral that we had received that morning. A lady named Eddy wanted requested a Book of Mormon so we brought that to her and set up a return appointment. Super nice lady who Ill talk more about later in this email. Then we had a planning session with Spanish Allen because he is like the master planner in our mission. It was good. There is a lot that Elder Allen and I could use improvement on.

Tuesday, we went out to dinner with Horace (He is too nice.) and then we had a lesson with him at his house after that and Brother Small came to meet us there. It went well. We actually answered some questions he had from reading in the New Testament. John 14:2 talks about "many mansions" and he was like, "What does this mean??" Uhhh yeah, we would LOVE to answer that!! So we did. We also saw Trey and Xavier that day and we taught them about the importance of daily scripture study (BoM) and daily prayer.

Wednesday evening, we met with Paul and Melissa and we brought our high counselor over missionary work in the stake with us. We meet with Brother Siddoway weekly, so when we met two Saturdays ago, we asked him to come. We only taught half of the Plan of Salvation because there were a lot of questions and we didn't get started with the lesson until like 15 minutes after we arrived. That is our bad. We let go of the leash. So we taught them up until the Spirit World to leave them on a cliff hanger until next time. Dun dun dunnn.... :)

Thursday, we went on exchanges with the Windrose Elders. I went with Elder Backstein who is a district leader in our zone. We went on exchanges with all of the district leaders this past week to give them the training on the planning so they can then give the training to each companionship in their districts. We had such a good exchange. I used to not like going on exchanges when I was first out, but now I love them! My least favorite part about exchanges is putting my sheets on the bed. I thoroughly dislike putting sheets on any bed. I don't know why, but there is just nothing appealing about putting sheets on a bed and its just one of those things we have to do. Other than that, we had a blast together. We taught an investigator who will be baptized within two months because she is that solid, then we had one of the best dinners I have had in a while. It was chicken (that fell off the bone) and green beans and mashed potatoes. Mmhmmm! So good. Then we found a new investigator that night while we were tracting! So sick!!

Friday, we went to district meeting and the topic was the importance of the Book of Mormon. It was so good. The Book of Mormon is everything. Period! Everything we have hangs on whether this book of holy scripture is true or not. I love it! I like it when things are simple because I am not the brightest crayon in the box, if ya know what I mean. Heavenly Father made it so simple for His children. He told us how to know if the Book of Mormon is true, and then gives us the further knowledge with it WHEN we find out that it is true. I learned a lot on Friday and we had a stellar role play with how to better introduce the Book of Mormon. I would encourage you all to read the talk "Flooding The Earth With The Book of Mormon" by President Benson in the October 1988 session. Seriously do it! You will love it!

Okay, Saturday was so sick. We started out great and ended even better!! We went to a baptismal service for the Magnolia Elders and Sean, Michael, and Jamie were all baptized! They are the family we interviewed like two weeks ago. It was great!!! Then we went back to Eddy's house and we met her husband Robert and her 11-year-old daughter Autumn. It was so good! Okay, so we went back to introduce the Book of Mormon better with the further light and knowledge we received on Friday and to set up a return appointment. Robert had read the first 13 chapters from when we gave Eddy two copies on Monday! Are you kidding me!?! I was like, "Robert, we try to do all we can to have our investigators read that much. Holy cow man! That is AWESOME!!!" Eddy read through the intro and the testimonies as well. We had planned to not be there super long because we want to show our investigators that we can be in and out within 30-45 minutes that way it doesn't seem like a hassle to meet with us. Also, that way we can meet two to three times a week as opposed to seeing them for one hour once a week and then leaving the entire rest of the week for the adversary to be working on them. It was a solid lesson and Eddy started us out with the first paragraph in the introduction then Robert read the second to last paragraph then Autumn read the last and she is such a great reader! Way better than me. It was so good. They said we have one question that we would like an answer to so we said shoot! Robert was like, "What is your guys' belief on hell? Because most of the churches we have gone to say you are either part of this religion or you are going to burn in hell." I was like, "Well, if the only way we were going to heaven was to be following Jesus Christ and doing all that he has asked us to do, most of the world would be hosed. Does that sound like a Loving Heavenly Father? NO WAY!" We were like, "That is a great question and we have the answer for you, but can we please come back and discuss it with you guys because we know this is your weekend and we do not want to take much of your time." Eddy was like, "We are not pressed on time, you guys can stay and we can talk about it?" We said we'd love to stay but we have another appointment that we have to get going to. Cliff hanger baby!! :) Don't worry, we really did have an appointment. Then we went and met with Horace again and actually talked about the Doctrine and Covenants with him. We went finding that night and found another new investigator Chris who was out front working on a bike with his two younger sons. We have a return appointment with him this Wednesday. He said he was going to talk to the boss to make sure its okay. :) We don't want anyone getting into trouble. :) We finished up our night by going over to Julie's house to talk with her about her reading and everything. She said she would come to church and bring Madison.

Sunday was good! Okay so Preach My Gospel says that if you have a choice about whether to go to Ward Council or visit your investigators to make sure they are coming to church, do the latter. We all know this but for some reason not many missionaries do that here. I don't know about other missions. I'll have to ask my boys that are almost all home now!! Anyways, so we sent Brother Small our ward mission leader a text and told him that we were not going to be at ward council because we were not certain that all of our gators were coming to church. We first went by Julie's and we woke everyone up and the dogs were going crazy, I thought Tim was going to come out and shoot us. He came out and was like pretty nice about. Maybe this is why they don't do it? They don't want to get shot? I dunno. He said Madison came home late and Julie was still in bed so I was like well were are super excited to see them at church and you are more than welcome to come with them! Then we pretty much bounced. We went to Horace's and he said he would not make it this week, but he will next week. Then we went by Trey and Xavier's to ask them and Sister Harthan was not feeling well, so they were not able to come either. I can honestly say we put forth the effort to get them to attend and guess what? Julie and Madison came as well as Angel. It was one of the best Sacrament Meetings they could have attended because the talk on patience from Brother Siddoway was incredible. It totally related to Julie and her family and I knew that, but more importantly she felt that. The Spirit was there.

I have so much more to say, but I type like a 7-year-old so this is taking a while. I continue to learn so much each week and I absolutely love it. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. As we have repented and done better with our planning, the Lord has been pouring out His blessings upon us. Why would He bless us with more people to teach if we do not take care of the ones that He has already entrusted us with? He wouldn't because He is that loving. He wants everyone to have a fair chance to hear and learn about His gospel so He will wait until we or someone is ready to take care of them. I am certain that this work is so real. I know that I came on MY mission to serve and convert others to the gospel, but I am the biggest convert in the process. I am grateful for the restoration of the gospel and for modern prophets and apostles who lead and guide us through this ever-changing world. Hold to the Rod. I love you all so much!

Love,

Elder DeLuca