Hello Everyone!

We had a very exhausting but exciting week!

Half Mission PDay was awesome. I was with and around a bunch of my favorite people, and right now seeing as I’m halfway through my mission, this is the point when I know the most people. It’s all downhill from here while many of the ones I know will be going home in the coming months. But we all had lots of fun playing water games!

I think Saturday was the most spiritually exhausting day I have had in my entire life. We did a few hours of service starting in the morning. It was for an investigator named Rudy, along with his brother Reuben, and we were helping them do renovations on a home they bought years ago which was pretty much run down.

Later on in the day, we taught a woman named Missy, who we were led to yesterday while doorknocking. Turns out she has been preparing to be a traveling minister for years, so we butted heads on almost everything that was said. She was very focused on physical proof and direct evidence through things like Joseph Smith’s specific actions and knowing where the gold plates are today. Elder Whitesides and I were very focused on faith, and testified constantly under the beating sun in high humidity, for two hours. FINALLY she accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon skeptically and has begun reading. I felt dead tired after that lesson and Elder Whitesides said he got a huge headache from all of it. But it doesn’t there! God really through another curve ball at us that day, because later one of our investigators asked us to come by and so we did, and to our surprise, his father was there as well. As it turns out, his father has ministered for YEARS and had many of his own ideas on scripture that he is steadfast in and talks non-stop. Once again, in the end he did accept hearing more of our message and finding out whether the Book of Mormon is more of God’s word, but I felt like I did not even have the strength to breathe deeply afterward.

I’m grateful for Christ’s atonement, and I’m grateful God has provided that we can partake of the sacrament, representing Christ’s body and blood. It sounds super weird to those who don’t know a lot about it, but it’s a way to remember all that Jesus willingly suffered for us, so that he could understand our pain and help us through our toughest trials, and once I partook of the sacrament yesterday I felt fully replenished.

I love you all! I hope you have a marvelous week! Stay safe and be strong! Fear not for the Lord is ever at your side.

Elder Breinholt