Sunday, January 12, 2014

The Worth of a Soul

Hello everyone!
 
We met with a few new guys this week, the highlight of which is a guy named NDY, who is an American stationed next to us at the army base. He bought us hot chocolate and we had a really great discussion about..basically everything. From medical school to foreign languages to missions. He knows a ton about our church, some of the guys he's in charge of on base are Mormons, and he said he can really see the impact missions had on his RM troops. He was pretty straightforward that he's comfortable in his belief and that trying to convert him is pointless, but he started to ask really good questions, like how we study the book of Mormon to help us. Do we read a specific story that applies to us or do we just read from cover to cover?
 
We talked for a little over an hour, and thing I'm most grateful for is that when he started to talk about his faith beliefs, I could feel my testimony growing as he talked about examples of service from the scriptures, etc. He's a really good guy, and he and his wife will have us over for dinner later. We're really excited.
 
There's a less active in our area who's going through a really rough time with losing almost everything he has, so the church is stepping in to help, but I have to be the translator, the English branch is helping, but they don't speak Korean. So we've been with him a lot, and it's been kind of stressful, handling bills and forms, bank account numbers and such, but all of that stress goes away when he looks in your eyes and expresses his deep gratitude for what we do. When it talks about the worth of a soul in D&C, and how great our joy will be if we are to save but one soul, it's not just helping people make steps towards baptism, but also helping them endure to the end. This man was lost, and he's coming back, and it brings me so much joy to see him  at church, enjoying the atmosphere and the spirit.
 
Other than that, we just talk to people on the streets or subway. Our zone set a goal for us:
Give out 1,500 Book of Mormons by the end of the month. There are 16 companionships, so that evened out to 94 books in less than 4 weeks. We have to give out 4 books a day to make the goal. That seemed impossible at first, sometimes you can go weeks without giving one out, but as my companion and I focus on introducing the Book of Mormon when we talk to people, it becomes easy. We're well on our way to completing our goal of 94 books, hopefully we can surpass that goal. I'll send a picture of our tower of books, hopefully it'll be gone soon!
 
I love you all and hope you can find the opportunity to introduce someone else to the book of Mormon this week!
 
Elder Franchina

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