Elder Hunter and I had a really awesome week and sad week.  I will start with the sad and get it over with.  We were able to meet with Thomas and we had an awesome lesson and he solidly committed to come to church.  On Sunday we were waiting for him and he never showed up so we texted him at the beginning of church asking him where he was and to make sure he was okay.  He texted us back saying that he was getting dressed this morning and ready to go when he received the answer that Joseph Smith was a false prophet and that he will be discontinuing our meetings, but he is going to continue reading the Book of Mormon to make sure that was the right answer.  Hopefully he will come along sometime in the future.  A member that we took with us to see him (Brother Parente) asked to have his phone number so he could call him.  Brother Parente called him and bore his testimony about the Book of Mormon and what we as missionaries shared with him and invited him to listen to the missionaries again.  Hopefully something works out with that.  We were just really sad to lose him.  Satan works in mysterious ways, but we are sure he will come around sometime.

  Now for the good news!  We went by and saw Korina on Friday night and she told us that she wants to start attending our church again and be a part of it.  Because she has been going and visiting other churches and she said that it just doesn't feel the same as when she comes to ours, she just feels good!  We are now going to continue our teaching with her and if she stays in town next month (She might be going to Oklahoma with her mom for a month) she will be baptized on the 20th of December.  She came to church on Sunday and is progressing very well.  It is amazing how the Gospel just makes you happy! 

 We are meeting with Jamie again.  She is so excited for a hopeful baptismal date on the 20th of December.  She is doing a lot better though, she didn't come to church this week because on Saturday night her daughter that she never gets to see was given permission to sleep over at her house and Jamie wanted to spend as much time with her as she could and they decided that they would just wait for next week to come to church.  So I will keep y'all updated on her!

  We were able to see Mathew as well this week and he is doing okay.  He expressed to us that he is so grateful that we were the missionaries that came by at this time and that we have helped him so much.  Hopefully we can continue to help him.  He said he was going to be at church today and never showed up so hopefully everything is alright with him.  We will see him again sometime this week and I will let y'all know what happened.  He is really smart though and just soaks up everything we teach him like a sponge.  He keeps telling us that he used to avoid Mormons and he would act like he wasn't home when we knocked on the door, but now he say's that we are ahead of the times.  Like we have so much knowledge and he just wants to learn more and more.  It's amazing how there is no limit to how much you can learn when it comes to the Restored Gospel.  

  We also had an awesome miracle this week!  We were going through some Former Investigators in our area book and found some people we wanted to try.  As we were going by and trying them there was a particular one that we knocked on the door and it was an older couple.  They told us that they had just moved in and that the people we were looking for just moved out.  They invited us in though and we had an awesome Gospel discussion.  We taught the Restoration in a format that I have never taught it in.  We started talking about Joseph Smith then it morphed into how God calls prophets and the how God loves us and we are his spirit children then to how Jesus Christ established a church and then to the Book of Mormon.  They were totally open and wanted to learn more.  A lot of their beliefs lined up exactly with what we believe.  We invited them to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it and also to read the Restoration Pamphlet.  They also expressed to us during our conversation that they were looking for a church because they just moved in, so we invited them to ours they said they would come when they can, but they couldn't come this week due to having Grand Children coming over.  We are really excited to work with them and we will be seeing them tonight with one of our members.  

  Elder Hunter and I are doing really well.  We working hard and having fun like usual.  I love y'all and hope that y'all have an awesome week!

Elder Willden

It is officially cold here.  It got way down in the 30's this past week brrrrrr.  Love you Mom!