He Shrunk and Would Not...

Dear Family,

This week I got to see a lot of miracles! We healed a man of his back aches, met with families that are progressing wonderfully, and got to invite a man that has rejected guidance and revelation from God, to repent, get back on course, and follow God!

The man with the back aches has a ridiculously strong testimony and knows that the church is true. He has a desire to be baptized. But for one reason or another he is hesitating. We have yet to uncover his unmet needs. He exercised a lot of faith in accepting a blessing and felt the effects of it for a short time. This is a testimony to me of the necessity of walking in faith for forever! He exercised a strong amount of faith and saw a miracle, but in order to retain it, number one it has to be God's will and number two we have to keep exercising faith. This man failed to continue exercising his faith in keeping the basic daily and weekly commandments (reading praying and coming to church) and so has seen only a temporary healing. This is a valuable teaching opportunity that we will take advantage of in our next lesson with him.

We were sitting at dinner and I looked our investigator in the eyes and asked him "Do you know why I have the title 'Elder' attached to my name and you don't?" He said no, so I then proceeded to teach him about my calling, authority, and rights as a called Elder of the Lord in this area at this time. I told him that my main role is to preach repentance and then to baptize those that are converted. We then spoke about this man's experience. He had a baptismal date for a few months ago, he prayed about it and felt strongly that he should get baptized. Despite that, he wimped out and didn't get baptized. During the lesson, we read a verse from 1 Nephi 4 about Nephi being told to kill the wicked Laban and then it says that he "shrunk and would not that he should kill Laban". We focused on the word "shrunk" and told him that he, like Nephi, shrank. We told him that, like Nephi, he needs to repent, and if he does, God will give him another chance to get baptized. He is going to start preparing and praying about a date to decide on next lesson! It was awesome! Hopefully he does what he said he would and will prepare to take that first step on the path back to Christ!

I love y'all!

Elder Siebach