12/13

haha..soo i didn't even realize it until i just put the date into the title..but i've been out for 19 months today..crazy. This has been a great week! I am truly grateful for the sacredness of baptisms! Last week at Brother Coleman's baptism, some members in the Fort Bragg Ward came and brought a non member friend with them! I was blessed with the opporotunity to present the message of the restoration to the congregation while Brother Coleman and Elder Hughes got dressed, and the Spirit was soo strong! Well..the next day at church, Ryan Dudash, (the nonmember) came to church and we got to teach the lesson in the Gospel Principles class, which he really enjoyed as well! Then on Thursday, we were able to go over and have a formal lesson with him inside of the member's home that brought him to church. Their names are the Farr's and they are amazing member missionaries! They've recently been re activated a couple of months ago, and they're leaving late this week for Mesa, AZ where they're gonna go be sealed for time and all eternity! But anyways..during our lesson with Brother Dudash, he had some great "questions of the soul" and was looking for more purpose to his life, as well as life in general. We had originally planned on reviewing the Restoration with him because we never got to actually go into full depth with him, but we barely talked about the restoration at all untill the very end! The Spirit ended up directing the conversation towards obedience, and happiness, and prayer, the plan of salvation, and even the gospel of Christ! (faith, repentance, baptism, gift of The Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end.) He was willing to give up smoking before we even brought it up! He then accepted the invitation to be baptized on January 1st! =) (talk about new year's resolutions..) Well..then we went over on Saturday night and he was...quite enthused about our visit..haha. He was so eager to let us know that he had not smoked a cigarrette the whole time in between our visits, even though the day before was the most stressful day of work he had had in a LONG time!! =) We are so excited for him! We knew that setting the date for January 1st was a big leap of faith because he is being transfered to Ft. Stewart, Georgia on January 10th..so he had to stop smoking fast! I'm so proud of him and that he was able to pull through! At the end of our lesson on Saturday night, he took the last pack of cigarrettes that he owned and proudly went into the back yard and destroyed them! That was a lot of fun! =)

Well..Christmas is coming up, and these are the rules for the call. I can only talk for about 40 minutes, so you're all probably gonna have to be around the phone when i call and we can do speaker phone, or something. I'll probably call around 1:00 pm here, so 12:00 back in Houston..if that changes, i'll let y'all know!

Well i love/miss y'all and i hope y'all are doing great!! I'm attaching a picture of Brother Coleman's baptism for y'all! Merry Christmas!!

Elder Johnson

Brother Coleman's Baptism