Shortest letter ever!

Dear Family,

Well it is good to hear that all is going well and that you'all are having a great holiday season. WE have had some incredible miracles this week which I am really excited to share with you all tomorrow! Just to give a little prelude, _____ will be getting baptized this week, probably on the 26th so we are going to have a white Christmas!!!! And also we had another investigator tell us she wants to get baptized after the Holidays are over, so after all the chaos and trials that have been happening the Lord in his Mercy has given us some amazing miracles! 

So for tomorrow we are going over to the Smiths to have Dinner at 1:30 and I will most likely be skyping probably around 3 pm our so, so that would be 1 pm your time. So just be ready around then and I will call and we will talk then! Well I am going to save mostly everything for tomorrow, that way I don't have to spend a lot of time on here. Love you all and talk to you tomorrow!

And even more Miracles!

Dear Family,                                                                                      

Oh boy what a crazy week it has been, I am pretty exhausted but it is good. I am glad to hear everything is going well back home, and it is good to know something I said last week helped someone.  I want to invite everyone that reads this letter to watch a talk by Jeffery R. Holland called "Safety for the Soul" It is powerful!  So I did get a new companion and his name is Elder W, he is actually from the same ward that Elder H came from haha kind of funny. He is a very hard worker and we already get along very well, so I am excited to work with him. He had just barely been called a district leader 2 weeks ago when the transfer started and now he got called to be a zone leader but he is handling it very well. 

On Thursday we got a media referral on our phone for a person. So we decided to go by and see him that day. When we went by a 16 year old kid answered and we asked him if ________ lived there. Out of nowhere comes this little 8 year old kid saying "That's me!" I wish I could have had a camera to take a picture of the expression on our faces because I am sure it was priceless, but we were shocked to say the least. We asked him if he went on the website and asked us to come by to which he replied he did. Well right at that moment his friend came by and he left with his friend to go play so we were left talking to his brother and his mom. They had no idea that he had done such a thing but with how funny it was it really opened things up and we ended up talking to his mom for 40 minutes right there on the doorstep. Her husband had actually passed away a year earlier and she had a lot of questions about religion and about life in General. It truly was a miracle! We set a return appointment for Sunday to go see them. When we went by we asked ______ how he got on the website and he said that he was just playing a video game on the internet and something popped up and he clicked okay, which if you know anything about the website is not how you request missionaries. You have to go to the website and type in all your information so that we could come by, so some miracle had to have happened. We ended up teaching the Restoration and we are going back on Tuesday to teach the Plan of Salvation, so we are really excited about them. _____  is progressing well and is getting baptized this month.

We also started teaching a lady this week who is most definitely the most prepared person to receive the Gospel that I have ever met on my mission. We taught her for the first time on Monday and before we started she asked why we came on missions and we tried to explain it to her, but she just wasn't getting why we would give up time to do something like this. I told her by the end of the lesson that she would know why we came out. As we taught her the Restoration she told us of an experience she had, that she used to be atheist and then had an experience that she finally prayed to know if God existed and she said she felt a warmth come over here that she had never felt before and she felt God's love and knew he was real. Ever since then she has been searching for that feeling again as we were teaching her she felt it again. She said that nobody had ever believed her before about her experience but now she has found people that do. By the end of the lesson she said "Now I know why you come, to find people like me." It was one of the most powerful lessons I have ever had on my mission. Later in the week we taught her the plan of Salvation and it answered all of her questions. She said later that she couldn't get the Celestial Kingdom out of her head, that now she has hope for eternal life because nobody had ever been able to tell her what happens after life but now she knows and now she has hope. Oh it was so powerful. We are going to see her tonight and she has a baptismal date set so we are very excited and so is she. 

Well I got to get going, but thank you for everything that you all do and have a wonderful week!   Love, Elder Bushman

Miracles!

Dear Family, I am sad! We were a little late for the Christmas devotional and I never saw Austin once! The only people they ever showed were the French horns and the flutes, it was ridiculous. However the messages were incredible and I really enjoyed it, so that was good. Anyway it is good to hear that all is going well there on the home front. I can’t believe Stephen is going to be home on Wednesday, that just blows my mind! I still don’t feel like I am ever going to be home, I’m pretty sure my mission will just last forever. As for what I want for Christmas, I think the thing I would like most is just to get letters from everyone like last year, that was the greatest of all the presents I got. But right now, I have everything I could ever ask for, I am on a mission serving the Lord, I am surrounded by amazing people, and I have a great family that supports me, what more could you ask for? The question is what would you all like from me?

Well we had a miraculous week this week! It really started off with an incredible zone leader council on Wednesday. Everyone was just very excited and fired up for this last month of the year to go out and give it all we got, and of course President Barry and Sister Barry just come in with so much power and love when they teach us. I love them so much! I think the thing I am excited about most for going home, and please don’t be offended by this, but the thing I am excited about most is giving Sister Barry a hug on my last day haha That will be just the greatest thing ever! Well anyway after that Elder H and I were very excited for the remainder of the week and we are excited for this month. On Thursday we had a lesson with one of our investigators, I believe I told you about her, well anyway we taught her the Doctrine of Christ and afterwards she said “Wow, that makes so much sense." Which is exactly what I say all the time, the Gospel makes so much sense! Well we were able to reset her date for the 23rd of December, 2 days before Christmas, and we put it on a calendar and she is very excited.  She is an incredible woman! So that was our first miracle.

The second Miracle we had was that, and you will never believe this, but we got permission from our Mission President to go to the Gator Bowl which is played at the Jacksonville Jaguars stadium! The game is on New Years’ day, which just happens to be on our P-day because transfers are that week, it was like it was perfectly set up by God. So we already have our tickets and are looking forward to that.

Third Miracle was that we had our ward Christmas party on Saturday and we had 8 investigators there and probably 15 nonmembers total. It was so good because we have noticed that it has already built a lot of trust with the ward. The bishop yesterday came up to us and gave us a referral and members are really beginning to trust us, it is really incredible. I have a feeling that this Ward is soon going to blossom with many baptisms.

The fourth miracle was that after church on Sunday we went to go see ________. They have been planning their wedding and we were able to convince them even more to plan it for this month! Then we worked at trying to set a date for _______ to get baptized but she told us that she wanted to work on getting married first. But then Elder H comes in and talks about how amazing it would be if she started of the new year with a new birth into following Jesus Christ. All of a sudden she got really excited and not wants to do that! So we set a date with her to be baptized on December 30! Fasting and prayer truly works, let me tell ya!

The 5th and final miracle happened this morning! This weekend J and her family all came to the Christmas party and loved it and then they all came to church, stayed for all 3 hours and loved it! It was such a beautiful sight to see their little family all growing together in the gospel. Well this morning we get a text from J saying "Good morning!" I said good morning back and asked her how her day was going. She then replied and said, "It is going well, I am on my way to work and I am texting my Brother-in-law and asking when he can be available to baptize me." As she texted this we were listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing a song that says "Hallelujah, Hallelujah" It was perfect and incredible! My heart is just filled with joy because a true change has come over her heart and she wants this in her life, for her, and nobody else. She knows it will bless her family obviously, but she is doing it for her, and I just love her and that family so much, I am truly truly blessed. Being a member of this church and coming to know the things that I have come to know has blessed me more than I can ever imagine, I don’t know why anyone would ever want to fall away, it makes no sense. Seeing the Gospel change people is why I came out here, and it has never ceased to amaze me as it continues to do so. I share frequently with people about my experience at Moroni's quest and how I saw two amazing young man be changed by it, I hope they still remember that and I am glad to hear that one of them is preparing to go on a mission. But that experience changed me, and made me realize that this Gospel truly is meant to change people, and I have witnessed that every day for the past, however long I have been out. What an incredible experience it has been and will continue to be! I really don’t know why anyone would not want to be a member of this church, but I guess it gives us that are members the opportunity to bear our testimonies to the world, and my prayer is that one day we will all be truly converted, not just to this true and living church but really to the true and living God who we are here to serve. I love you all and thank you for all that you do, have a great week! Love, Elder Bushman