April 10, 2016 -- Just Another Week in Oneida

This past week has been pretty normal for a missionary.  By normal I mean it had the good, the bad, and the ugly; but looking back on it I can definitely see the Lord's hand.

Elder Smith and I have been spending some more time finding this past week. On Friday night, we had two appointments fall through but that was alright because our backup plans never fail us!!  It was 8:10 at night and we were sitting in our car preparing to go tract, so we said a prayer asking the Lord where he would have us go so we could find one of his children who was ready to hear the true message. After the prayer, we started driving not knowing where we should go.  We then felt like we should stop in this one neighborhood.  So we got out and started tracting. The people at the first two doors were not interested, but the person at the third door invited us in to have a drink of water. We gladly accepted. We started talking about religion and Jesus Christ. The guy's name is Kevin and he is non-denominational Christian. The conversation continued to roll and he eventually said that he liked talking to us because we had good hearts. We continued talking about the stories of Jesus Christ in the Bible. My favorite thing he said was "don't try to convert me, I only do what God tells me to do"..... I'll take my chances with that. We left him with a Book of Mormon and are going to meet up with him tonight so hopefully that goes well.

The branch is doing well. We may be small in number but we are mighty in spirit. We have not been able to meet the past two weeks because of General Conference and Stake Conference.  I can't wait to meet back up with them this Sunday.  The First Councilor just asked me to speak this Sunday after we got done playing some basketball in Utica. That means Elder Smith and I will both be speaking this week.

Until next week, the sky is blue, the church is true, and life is good.

Love,
Elder Carlile

P.S. The picture is from a couple of weeks ago before the snow hit.