Happy Thanksgiving!

     Another great week here in Issaquah, Washington.  First off, thanks to everyone for all of your birthday wishes and gifts! I love you all so much! That meant so much to me.  I had just a great birthday!  

     We had a really spiritual week this week. On Thursday 3 or 4 zones met with the president and had a little lecture at the stake center. It was awesome!  President Larkin is a very inspired man, he truly is just the best!  He talked a lot about the power of prayer and that we need to pray where we need to go tract. The whole time I was kinda thinking that it didn't apply to us becuase the area of Tiger Mountain is so small that if we don't do the next neghborhood in line we will end up tracting a neighborhood we did a week ago. We left the meeting and decided that we should change that and start to pray before we go tracting and decide where we should go!  So we went home and did just that. 

     We headed out tracting with a specific area in our minds that we felt we should go. We went down this road and felt prompted to go to the house on the left side of the road.  We knocked on the door and the lady let us right in!  We talked with her about our church and how we are different from other churches, we didn't get a return appoinment but I felt the spirit so strongly that I know that something will happen with that later on.  

Happy Birthday Elder Aiken!

     I came home from tracting and walked in and saw packages from my friends and family!  I was so happy because I didn't think that the zone leaders were going to have time to go to the mission office and get them!  We all made a cake my friends sent me and loved every second of it!  It was the best. 

     On Friday we had another great experience!  We headed over to the church at 4:30 to go teach Ray, one of our investigators that they have been teaching forever. He always comes to church and asks us if he can come tracting with us but isn't baptized.  So all day we really felt the spirit telling us that we needed to be serious with him and find out why he hasn't been baptized.  I felt really strongly that there was something else that was stopping him from being baptized than just the commitment. We started talking about tithing and that he felt that he wasn't going to be able to pay it.  The spirit was so strong and I bore my testimony about the principle of tithing.  I shared the story of when I was going back up to Utah State for the second semester and I pretty much had the option of paying my tithing or buying groceries. Almost every night those two weeks before my first pay check someone invited me to dinner. I always was provided for because of the power that is in paying tithing. I don't remember half of the things that came out of my mouth but I know that Ray felt the spirit and will be baptized in a short time. 

     One more quick story!  On Saturday we really felt that we needed to go to another area that had been tracted kind of recently. As we were riding our bikes up this mountain road we really felt prompted to head up this driveway, as we started going up the driveway it was SOO sketchy so we almost turned around but felt that we should go anyways. This old man answered and said that he wasn't interested but as we were walking away he said, one second here is someone that might want to talk. His 30ish year old son walked out and invited us in!  We had such a great lesson. We committed him to be baptized on December 11th and he said if he read and felt the spirit that he would! Truly amazing.  As we were leaving we found out he was just visiting his dads and lives in a different mission but I know that he will come closer to Chirst through all of this and his life will be changed. I love you all!  This week is Thanksgiving and I hope that we can ponder in our hearts always, our many blessings. We receive more blessings than we can take in. Remember that. Love you! Happy Thanksgiving!

Now this is Heaven!