Week 17-Rock Spring,WY

Elder Kirsi is a stud!

Elder Hanks and I

Let's see.... We almost hit SOE for lessons this week! That was pretty cool. We have focused a lot on finding and we have found many investigators to teach in result of God's help. We ran into a lady native to Guinea-Bissau in Africa. She can only speak Portuguese. We will be going back this week with a Portuguese return missionary. I'm excited for her. We had a cool experience with the Elders Quorum president in one of our wards. We organized a service project for one of our investigators before conference on Saturday. We had an awesome turn out and we were able to successfully chop wood for her, install a few broken windows, and fix up and till her yard! It is very probably that we will start teaching her daughters next week. She is an awesome lady. She is currently fighting cancer. We also got a call that possibly three people in our area want to get baptized. We will be meeting with them tonight! We met with a black family from California. They were very opinionated about the Book of Mormon. They have potential if they can let down their barriers of judgment and consider our message. Their son is on a mission in Georgia.

 Life is good. We are working as hard as we can and trying to rely on the Lord as much as we can. I testify that this is His work and we can't do it without him. I know first hand. 

Conference was great. It was a good experience to watch it with the other elders and sisters in Rock Springs. My favorite talk was Elder Ballard. He explains things so clearly and it's really instructive and edifying. There were a lot of Seventies that I liked as well. I am truly upset that it is over. It was very uplifting and edifying for me. I received revelation on how I can improve! That's one of the reasons I love conference and the scriptures; you can always find things to improve on! 

Anyways, Life is good! I absolutely love my mission and being a missionary. I am ever grateful for this opportunity! 

-Elder Bass

Later notes: The black family i mentioned in the letter i give a little more detail about. I vividly remember the experience. We started to try to teach the first discussion at like the first or second principle the flood gates opened and he told us everything that his pastor had told him. He referenced scriptures in revelation. The main concern that he had was that the bible was the only word and there was no more word except it was the bible. Many many times during the visit he beat the bible and said," the word is right here, i just don't get the book." He also brought up excommunication. We invited him to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. He said that he would examine it with his pastor. We asked for a return appointment he said we could come back to play cards but they were good. Good times...

I felt like being with Elder Hanks was comparable to training someone. I had foolishly expected a capable and developed missionary who would show me how to do missionary work, but God wanted me to learn those skills on my own.