Church is awesome!

Cara Famiglia,

How is everything? Busto is awesome! We are having a great week and just tearing it up here. This Sunday we had seven non-members in church! Including Isaac, our awesome golden Nigerian friend, and two other Nigerian brothers who we found this week. It was awesome to see them there and be able to feel the spirit of church!

So Isaac is still going great! We taught him about baptism with a member during the first hour of church and it went great! He really wants to be baptized. And then last night we taught him again with a member and we taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and it went really good! So he is progressing well, reading the Book of Mormon and praying and still hoping to be baptized on the 10th of December. Although it will be a miracle if he can get married by then. But pray for him to be able to obey the Law of Chastity! The other two Nigerian brothers we brought to church are Thomas and Augustin. They are refugees from Libya! They literally ran away from war to get on a boat and make it here with just the clothes on their backs and are living in a guest house here under the custody of the UN. It is a little bit tough to teach them because they mainly speak Pidgin English, but they came to church and are reading the Book of Mormon! We are seeing them again tomorrow. They are great.

Other than that we are doing a bunch of finding work. We talked about it in District Meeting this week about how finding work isn't just finding people, it's finding your family members who need the gospel! They aren't from someone else's family either! So we are really working hard as we contact people to love them and just bear pure testimony about how the restored gospel will bless their lives!

I read through Enos the other day, and I really liked an idea that Enos put into practice:

10 And while I was thus struggling in the spirit, behold, the voice of the Lord came into my mind again, saying: I will visit thy brethren according to their diligence in keeping my commandments. I have given unto them this land, and it is a holy land; and I curse it not save it be for the cause of iniquity; wherefore, I will visit thy brethren according as I have said; and their transgressions will I bring down with sorrow upon their own heads.

11 And after I, Enos, had heard these words, my faith began to be unshaken in the Lord; and I prayed unto him with many long strugglings for my brethren, the Lamanites.

I liked the idea of 'struggling in the spirit'. It is really true sometimes that we may have to struggle to recognize, understand, and follow the spirit's promptings, but when we do that our faith begins to be unshaken! I wish all my prayers were like that, but prayer, as the Bible Dictionary says, is a form of work! I know that as we diligently work on improving our prayers, to make them more sincere, specific, and spirit-guided we will truly see miracles happen in our lives. I know Jesus Christ is our Savior, and that this is his "one true and living church". I love this work, and I love you all a lot!

-Anziano Benjamin Smith