Tuesday, September 6, 2016

113 miles in 12 days!



Hey Everybody! So this week has been really amazing and it seemed to fly by really fast. This week we were able to get a kid named Cody on date for baptism! Cody is 8 right now and his mom was a convert to the church like 12 years ago, so she wanted him to have the missionary lessons before he made the decision to get baptized. He is so knowledgeable about the Gospel and our purpose here on earth. It was an awesome lesson and i know that Cody is really excited to be baptized. Anyways we have been putting in some work to get to know all the people in the area. The members are really supportive and they are so welcoming. They have sent us to a few people that we were able to have nice gospel conversations with. The Gilbert zone has a really high percentage of members, but there is a lot of people who still haven't heard of the LDS church. I have set a goal to invite everyone that we talk to on the street to do something to come closer to Christ. One thing that i have definitely learned is that you cant judge a book by its cover! 

So yesterday we did exchanges with the APs so Elder Broulim came out with Elder Ralph and i. Elder Broulim is from RIgby Idaho and he is an awesome missionary. Anyways yesterday we were just riding around and we stopped and talked to a guy named Jim. So Jim is a pretty rough looking guy with tatoos all over. He talked with us for a few minutes and it turns out that he spent like 28 years in jail, but now he gives a lot of credit to Jesus Christ to where he is now. He said that he wants to grow closer to Christ because he realizes how he has helped him since being out. He accepted a Book of Mormon. and said that he would read and pray about it with his girlfriend. We will follow up with him later this week. Meeting Jim reminded me that we cant judge a book by its cover and that we are all Children of God. 
For Gabbi
One of the highlights of my week was talking to this family who had a 4 year old kid. We were on our way home for the night and we saw this family just chilling in their front yard. So this 4 year old kid asked us what we were were doing. We told him that we were sharing a message about Jesus Christ and he said that "Jesus lives in the sky and satan lives in the dirt" it was super awesome and then he asked, "so are you going to sing or talk to us?" so i looked at Elder Ralph and then i asked the kid what he wanted us to do. He said "i want you to sing for me!" So he literally pulled up a seat and we sang i am a child of God for him. It was so awesome and then we shared a short message about the Gospel with his family. It was so much fun and we had a good laugh because the kid was so funny! 

Overall this week was awesome. In just 12 days we put 113 miles on our bikes in the nice heat of Arizona. This area is really nice for biking actually and it is a great way to meet everybody on the street. I love being here! I would love to hear from all of you! I love you all and hope that all is well! 

Elder Kestner