I actually would like to start by sharing a thought I had of what I read this morning in personal study, about Moroni and Zarahemna. I thought about how Moroni had the advantage in many ways, with the breastplates, the helmets, and his superior strategy. We as well have the advantage over Satan with Christ. We have the Breastplate of Righteousness, the Helmet of Truth, we have the Strategy of the Gospel. Yet, there was a point, and we all have these points fairly frequently in our lives I would say, where despite all their advantage, the forces of Moroni were about to turn back and flee, and would have if not for the inspiring words of thier leader, Moroni, and their mighty prayers to the Lord. And still it took much effort and much battle time to bring the Lamanites to submission. I was thinking, and this is how it is with us: Satan won't give up on fighting, despite the fact that he knows he's overmatched. And it's hard, there's points where we get discouraged. We almost turn back and flee, But if we harken to the words of our leaders, the Prophet and Apostles, to the Scriptures, and we cry out in mighty prayer to the Lord, we can overcome and defeat Satan and his forces in our daily, weekly, monthly, and life-long battles. I just wanted to share that insight with y'all today.
Otherwise, though, this week was pretty ok, we weren't able to teach as much as we were hoping, but we were able to meet with Salvador and teach him the Plan of Salvation. We are hoping and praying to see him make progress and begin to come to Sacrament Meeting and keep other committments soon. He wasn't able to come to Sacrament Meeting yesterday becuase he and his family were out of town, but we will continue inviting him and trying to help him make it there. We weren't able to see a number of the investigators that we picked up last week, but we do hope that this week we will find them at home and be able to teach them. We were able to teach Miguel though, that we picked up last week. And he had read the pamphlet we left him! He seems to really start picking up interest beyond just superficial interest, especially about the Plan of Salvation, and what happens after this life. We left him a Plan of Salvation pamphlet to read and are hoping that it will catch his interest and motivate him to change. We seem to have a lot of potential in this area and we continue to see small miracles often, but sometimes we seem to have trouble getting people to keep committments and thus end up progressing and changing, but sometimes it's just the fact that people have their agency. But I'll probably study about that a good bit this week :) maybe I'll let y'all know what I learn :) Otherwise, things are going well, we are for sure staying busy here in Napa, all of us missionaries! I'm really glad that I got called by the Lord to be here and to see the miracles going on here, especially the recent baptism of the kids of the Hernandez family (the ones we helped to smoosh cockroaches) that took place yesterday, and the upcoming baptism of many more of the members of that family, including the parents, an aunt and maybe even another of the kids! Even though they weren't in my area, and we haven't had a ton of interaction with them, I've grown to love that family a lot just to see the change and love and joy this gospel has brought into their lives. They will add a lot of strength to the Branch here and even on that subject this past Sunday was really exciting because there was basically no empty seats in our Sacrament Meeting, with about 65 or so people in attendance! It's been an exciting week, maybe not so much because of what went on for me, but because of the Hastening of the Work that's been going on in this area!
I love y'all and sorry this letter is maybe a little shorter, the keyboard that this computer has is pretty terrible, and I'm not a fast typer to begin with! Hopefully y'all have a wonderful week and survive the cold weather :)
-Elder Whitaker
P.S. my new address is 1125 Pine St. Napa, CA 94558