Well, this week was pretty dang awesome! Highlights of the week: I went to Dublin on Tuesday, an Investigator has a baptismal date, we found a few more people to teach, and I got one heck of a sunburn!
Here it goes…
MONDAY- we did the usual P-day things, and then after that, we just enjoyed the outdoors in the town centre. After that, we headed down to Newtonabbey to stay the night there so we could make it down to Dublin easier the next morning. But Monday was great! A partly cloudy day, but still nice.
TUESDAY-started early. We had originally planned to get up at 6:00 so we could leave at 7:00 and arrive in Dublin by 9:30, like usual. But, at 5:30 in the morning, we received a call from the Zone Leaders saying that we had to be in Dublin by 8:00am, which meant we had to be ready to leave in 30 minutes! So, all 4 of us got ready as fast as we could and peeled out to head to Dublin. It was really nuts!
Once we arrived in Dublin, the Conference was great. We talked a lot about using the scriptures to teach with more power and spirit. It was really an enlightening one. We were shown what scriptures could apply to which situations, and also which ones are good to teach some of the most basic principles, in both the Bible and the Book of Mormon. The conference was also good because I got to see a lot of my past companions! (Since most of them are still in Ireland). So that was great! After the conference, we headed back to Belfast, and picked up some ice cream, and then we stayed again in Newtonabbey since we had a meeting to go to on the next morning.
WEDNESDAY- We woke up and went to our meeting, and then we headed home. Total these past three days, we did over 10 hours of travel. It was exhausting! But pretty awesome! And the weather was absolutely amazing starting with Wednesday. Once we arrived home, we grabbed our list and went out to try and locate some people. We weren't able to find anyone on Wednesday, but we did have some good conversations with people, and then we retired to bed.
THURSDAY-We started off by going and doing some finding around the church, and after trying by a potential investigator, we had a lesson with 'I'. It was really good. We really focused on the scriptures and helping her find an answer to her prayers. We ended up committing her to baptism on the 28th of May! We gave her the date so that she could show her willingness to follow God's plan of us, so we are hoping and praying that she finds an answer!
After the lesson with 'I', we headed over to 'J.D's house and had a wee chat with him. He is doing good and seems to be getting better since we have been teaching him more often. So that is really good. After 'J.D', we headed to the church and taught our Book of Mormon class. It went pretty well. We focused on Jacob 3. We were going to do Jacob 4 as well but we ran out of time. It was a good class nonetheless. Then we headed back for dinner and off to bed.
FRIDAY- We did weekly planning and then we went out and had some tryby's. They worked out okay. We weren't able to find anybody but we did talk to some good people. But Friday was pretty slow.
SATURDAY- we went down to town center and we GQed for 4 hours. We found a really solid guy named 'M' who has heard of Mormons, but he has a lot of questions and he is super solid. He is looking for a belief, and he is really interested. It was awesome. I also bought some American cookies from a guy at the farmer's market in town. It was great. Then we went over to President Culbertson's shop to see if there was anything he wanted us to do. After that, we went over to the church to teach 'I'. We had a Plan of Salvation scripture chase, and it went really well. Only thing is, the weather was dang nice and I decided to sit directly in the sun for two hours. That was a colossal mistake. I got roasted! It has been a while since my skin has seen the sun, and it had a panic attack. I was pretty red hot for the rest of the day.
After 'I', we went and GQed a bit more and then we went over to 'P.C.'s house. He really opened up this time and told us how he is feeling so we are really making progress there. It was actually a pretty good lesson. After that, we headed home and to bed.
SUNDAY- We had church, which was really good. We had a lot of visitors from Utah again! They were on holiday or something, but they were really nice. The sacrament meeting was great, and the rest of the classes went pretty good, as well. I really enjoy Sunday School. After church, we headed home from lunch and then we headed out again to go see Norman. He is doing good. He had a little bit of a spill on his bike and fractured his arm, but other than that, he is great.
After Norman, we had a try by and there was girl living in the house that we were trying by. She said she wants to come closer to Christ, and she would love to have us over. So we are going to be teaching her on Wednesday night. It is exciting. After that, we went chapping for a little while more and then headed home for the evening.
Well, that is about it. This week was pretty great! We are starting to see the Lord pour out great blessings in Coleraine! It is just a matter of being ready to receive them! It has been an amazing week!
Till the work is done
-Elder Mickelsen
