April 27, 2009

Family Judd the baker's dozen,
What up my family. I'm so excited to be able to write you this wonderful Monday morning. I've really been spiritually fed this week and hope to really make something of it.
As yall probably know I was able to hear from Elder Foster of the quorum of the seventy this last Saturday. He was very humble and spoke of being a greeny compared to the man he was speaking with. He taught a lot of important things we could do to increase the baptisms here in the FOM. We are really looking forward to the ideas he has given us. We are going to try a lot of them this coming week and see the difference in our work.
But the speaker yall really want to here about is, the one and only, Jeffery R. Holland. Oh what a joy it really was to have a prophet seer and revelator of the lord speak to and share his personal witness of the Savior Jesus Christ. He focused a lot on letting us know how much he loves us. He told us he owes everything he has to us the missionaries of the church. I could really feel the sincerity of the words he spoke. His humble demeanor was unbelievable, I did not expect it especially from him when he usually gives the chastising talk in conference. I really enjoyed listening to him and can't tell you how great of a spirit he truly has.
Anyways back to the week that i had because it was a good one. We were able to find a few new investigators but our numbers are still down a little. For anyone who's been a mission you can relate to what I'm going to say. It is very hard to stay focused on the goals that you set, not really the daily goals but maybe the weekly or monthly goals. But I am working on it and will get better at doing it.
Our investigators are Ransom, who is about sixteen years old, and I met him playing football the first time. The second time we were tracting and tracted his house and taught him. The spirit was strong, I've really been pondering the last week on why it was so strong. I came to the conclusion that it was so strong because he was being prepared. He was truly looking for more he has been looking for something more and we've been able to bring it to him.
Heather is an interesting story and real testimony builder. We were biking and ran into a twelve year old kid named Jeremy Fisher. My companion started teaching him a little and set up an appointment for later that day with his family. I thought this was very strange because usually if you talk to kids you just give them a card but he actually set up an appointment with him. I was thinking that my companion was crazy, but then I thought to myself there has to be some thing else that was no coincidence so we made sure we went there at four o'clock. Well it turns out that we didn't meet Jeremy Fisher at his house, in fact it was not his house at all but we met Heather. Heather is a single parent about twenty five years old and has a friend on a mission. She really has a lot of questions and I know the lord has been preparing her to recieve the restored gospel.
Ashley Gonzales is the last but not least. We met her family tracting and they were very awesome. However they've been really hard to help progress, but their daughter(Ashley) is about thirteen years old and has been once to young womens and came to church yesterday. We are really excited to work with her. She really could be the means by which her family comes into the church so we are very excited to work with her.
St.Cloud's new bishop is amazing and really a big help to us. Bishop Forte is such a strength and very missionary oriented. He's very good and doesn't seem new at all. St.Cloud is really going to explode and I'm so happy I'm going to be a part of it. Well I'd just like to say good bye and also tell you once again to send any letter to the mission home address not the St. Cloud address because I could be transferred at any time and would not receive your letters for a long time so please write to the mission home address.
Love you all Elder Judd