Letter- August 27, 2012

Hey, so this week has been stinkin' crazy! Lots of things to update you on. First of all, I want to say that right now I am in Salt Lake City's Joseph Smith Memorial Building in th Family History Center writing to you! (and there isn't any way for me to send pictures from this computer, so I'll give you this week's pics next week.) We are not here doing family history, though. We're here because we decided it'd be convenient to walk here to do email...AFTER GOING TO THE TEMPLE! Uh huh, I totally got through this morning. :) It is beautiful! I was so happy to have a mission temple session this morning, because I haven't been able to go to the temple since the Saturday before I left to the MTC! Because the Provo temple just happened to be closed for three weeks. (Only the three weeks I was there...no big deal haha.) So this is the first time in about two months that I got to go. Oh, how I love the temple! Hee po ho poo, PLEASE go to the temple often! Have you taken our family names that I passed along to you to the temple do have their work done yet? Please, please, please do, and then tell me how you feel! I know that they will be so thaku (happy) if you do!

Okay, so I had a list in my head of things I needed to tell you in this email that I should've written down...Mom, can I maybe get some more foundation and a new Obagi face wash set sent to me? I use the same foundation as Cassie. Tell Mackenzie thanks so much for sending me a letter! I will write her when I can! So excited she will be here in SLC going to UVU here soon! And tell their family my zone leader here is Elder Miller who knows Marissa's husband, EJ. He actually is close friends with EJ's younger brother, whichever Mason boy that is. You can let them know that he rocks as a zone leader. And so does Elder Wilkins as a district leader. Tell our Mesa friends to WRITE HIM. He doesn't ever get any mail. :(

Okay, so now to the good stuff...we had our mission tour on Friday and it was sooo amazing! Elder Whiting and Elder Foster of the Seventy came and spoke with us. And President Winn also spoke and built my faith so much! We went out that meeting feeling so pumped to go find someone to baptize for the very next night. We went to a family's house that are Catholic and are the sweetest people ever. They had a friend there would was completely drunk. We shared with them that Christ's church has been restored to the earth and taught all about that and how we have a prophet today and twelve apostles and the priesthood, just as Christ did during His ministry. The drunk man was being very disruptive and saying the same things over and over again. Something about how he doesn't know much English, but that he knows that we were talking and that it was good haha. So despite all of our laughing over this blessed, drunken son of God on one side of the room, the Spirit was really strong in the other half of the room where the oldest son of the family was sitting. He felt it. His name is Shar, and he let us know that he could feel that everything said was true. He expressed his feelings to be baptized, but that he was concerned because he was baptized in Thailand already. We cleared everything up about the right priesthood authority to baptize and all that truth. We invited him to pray about it and let him know that he could take his concerns to God, and that God would directly answer him to know what he should do and that he didn't have to take our word for it, but know for himself from his Heavenly Father. After we closed with a prayer. We said our "tah blu pado's" (thank you's) and were about to leave because our curfew was soon.

[This is when this story takes a drastic change...]
The drunk man after shaking my hand asks if he could look at it. He started reading my hand and Shar translated his Karen for me so I knew what he was saying. He told me that I get sick a lot. I don't really get that sick, but I do feel a little headache when I don't drink enough water, so I said he was kinda right. Then we were ready to walk out the door, but the man forced me to sit down in the middle of the family room and insisted on telling me more with the whole family watching. You guys, he started saying things about my personal life that he shouldn't know about. He said things about our family and other things. It freaked me out. We looked at our watches and saw it was 9:38 pm, eight minutes passed the time we were supposed to be in our house, and we got out of there. That really shook us up, so we sang More Holiness Give Me and said a prayer before we started our planning that night for the next day. The next morning, I couldn't even really exercise, because I was still too deep in thought about the whole thing. I thought about how everything he told me about my life had truth to it in a sense, but that it was all presented to me in such a negative way. (I'll give you more details about what he told me in a letter home.) So he basically told me a bunch of lies based on truths. This is what I concluded... I know that because that man was drunk, he had no control of his agency. I know that one of Satan's angels was placed inside of him and that is who I was talking to. I know that Satan can't know what we are thinking or what is in our hearts, those things that he knew about were things that I have said out loud to my companion. That is the only way that he knew these things. I think he is pathetic. He tried to make me feel discouraged. He knows we are children of God. He tries to distort that truth all the time. I know that he only has power to bruise our heel, but we ave the power to crush his head. (or however that scripture states it.) I amd grateful to have the knowledge of this restored gospel and to know how much our Father in Heaven knows us.

Oh so by the way, Shar came to church yesterday. :) He is on his way to baptism! I can feel it! Even though we didn't baptize anyone this last weekend, i have learned so much with the determination and fiath that we gained by trying our hardest to do so. I love this work! I love the joy I feel when sharing these precious truths to God's children! I really do not want to be transfered out of this area. I could live here forever. I love these people so much.

And I love you, family! Let me know how you are doing! And also, I would love any advice you have for me. Scriptures, talks, missionary opportunities you've had. Spiritual experiences. All of those things. Royce, Shar actually reminds me of you. Sometimes he looks like he is too cool for anything, but I know he has so much love and loyalty inside of him yearning to learn all these things and then be obedient to God. do you have any advice for me on what we can do to help him come out of his shell more? Okay, I love you guys lots!!

Sister Candice LeSueur