This week was pretty nuts. A lot of stuff happened and I think I had probably one of the best Sundays I've ever had on my mission.
So the first big thing that went on this week was that the head of the mission department of our church came to our mission to teach the AP's and other leaders about some things that our mission can do in order to better teach, plan, and find investigators here. Since Elder Root and I work with the AP's and the whole new teaching idea that was given would help us alot at Fort Jackson, Elder Root and I got to hear about it too. It was pretty neat to see what the mission department said and we mostly learned how to teach the Restoration in 7 minutes with only the pictures in the pamphlet which was pretty cool. I've done it a few times before but now that it's a set thing that we're encouraged to do I'm definitely going to do it more. It helped a ton at Fort Jackson because we always have to teach really quickly too. President Turner has changed some things and it's been awesome so far. He's been great. He and Sister Turner came to Fort Jackson today too. They come every once in awhile to see how it all goes. We didn't have any baptisms today but we set up some for next week and found some new people to teach. Fort Jackson wasn't really particularly special this week, but church was afterwards. We had 3 Less Actives that haven't come to church in a long time come to church this Sunday! Logan, Sister Garner, and Sister Laberto. It was pretty sweet because we've been working with all of their families this transfer and they showed up on the right Sunday since Elder Root and I were both giving talks. Janet came with Logan too! She really loved church and so they're both on a good track for her getting baptized and for them to go to the temple to be sealed someday.
So Elder Root and I gave talks on Sunday too. Originally they were only supposed to be about 5 minutes, but when we got to church Brother Stacey, the 2nd Counselor in the Bishopric said that the third talk isn't going to show up today and so we are probably going to have more time than we had planned haha. He said that he was going to try his best to take up some time. He spoke first and then it was my turn... I always get super nervous whenever I have to give a talk in church for some reason and so I was really nervous when I knew I had to stretch my talk alot. The topic was on conversion and I pretty much just sat there and prayed the whole time in my head for God to help me out and give me some things to talk about so that I could take up more time, and also to help me not be so nervous haha. Well I got up there and literally every word that I said flowed out super well, It felt like I only had spoken for a little under 10 minutes maybe, I said so many things that I didn't plan on saying, and then I finished it off with my testimony and sat right down. Well turns out I took 20 minutes for the whole thing hahaha. It didn't even feel like that long! Elder Root was so happy that I took up all the extra time too haha. He was just as nervous as me. After Sacrament he and I were talking and I went "Man I was praying so hard that I would take up more than 5 minutes while I was sitting there" and he went "Dude me too because I definitely was not going to be prepared for any longer than a couple of minutes!" hahaha. So yeah my talk went awesome and Brother Stacey gave me a big hug and was like "That was perfect" hahaha. He was really stressed on how sacrament was going to go. It seriously was a great talk and I don't even know how I did it, but obviously I had a lot of help from God because there is no way I could have done that on my own haha!
So yeah this week was awesome. Elder Root and I are really happy with how Sunday turned out and we're going to work with everyone that came to church more so that they can all live the gospel and be happy. Things are looking good.
Love,
Elder Sean Bills
PS Elder Root's parents went to the Phoenix Temple Open House and I told them to look for y'all while you were touring and apparently his dad ran up to every guy that was working there asking them "Are you Brother Bills?" hahahaha. you should get in contact with them! They live in Gilbert and they seem to be really awesome.