Hi everyone!
On Saturday Chad Ike got baptized! He was the one that Elder DeVries and I took to the Elder Ballard fireside back in March. The baptism was sweet! I was able to be one of the witnesses and I also gave the closing prayer! During the baptism they had Chad get up and bear his testimony and it was awesome. He is such a cool guy and has a strong faith in Jesus Christ that will bless him for the rest of his life.
Jacob LoGreco from my last area in Farmington was also baptized on Saturday! We had a ward activity so I wasn't able to go attend the baptism, but I was able to Skype in with my old companion Elder Merrell, and watch Jacob get baptized. So cool! He looked so happy and excited to be baptized. I am going to repost the story on how he was found from my Weekly Letter three months ago!
Excerpt from Feb. 6th: " ....a few months back me and Elder Miller started teaching a 12 year old named Jacob LoGreco. His grandma was a member and she had just passed away so we were starting to teach him and help him work towards baptism, but after a couple months of taking the lessons he wasn't taking it seriously and didn't care. He didn't want to come to church or read the Book of Mormon. So we told him that we couldn't come back and teach him anymore because he didn't want to keep his commitments. He was a little upset, but he just said okay. Then on Thursday night, I was on a split with one of the youth in the ward, and I felt impressed to go see Jacob (it had been four weeks since I had seen him last). But I talked myself out of it because I didn't think it would be an effective use of time. I got the prompting again to go see Jacob and so I was just like fine we will stop by to just see how he is doing. We stopped by and Jacob was super excited to see us. We go in and he says, "I can't believe you guys are here! You will not believe what happened today." He said, "earlier today I was thinking about you guys for some reason, and so I decided to make a bet with God. I made a deal with God that if none of my friends could hangout today then I would go to church with you guys and get baptized. I don't know why I made that deal but I felt like I should. And today literally none of my friends could hangout. Not a single one! So I said okay God you win, I will get baptized. But, I didn't know how it would happen since you told me you weren't coming back anymore, but then 3 hours later you show up at the door!!" You can imagine my excitement as he told me all this. I was freaking out, but I was also overwhelmed with gratitude that the Lord led us to his house."
So awesome right!? The Lord has a plan for everyone!
The rest of our week here went good! We took Alex to the Portland Temple Visitor Center and we talked to him about getting the priesthood and going to do baptisms in the temple. He was super excited and is working on getting the priesthood. He even got up in church on Sunday and bore his testimony!
On Thursday we went to the temple as a Zone which was great. In a month I'm going to be doing my departing temple trip, how crazy is that.
Saturday night Elder Brian and I put on a ward activity where we had a ping pong tournament at the institute building downtown! We had a good turnout and it was a lot of fun! I love serving in downtown Portland!
Okay, one last little miracle for the week. On Thursday evening we went to go see a less-active girl with our bishop. We had a lesson with her and her mom and it went really well! During the closing prayer I had the distinct impression to ask her if she had any friends that were going through a hard time that we could share a message with. After the prayer, I was about to ask her but before I could say anything Elder Brian asked her literally that exact same question word for word. She said, "yes there is actually! My friend is going through a hard time and he wants to learn more about the church." We set up a time to go to the temple visitor with them this week. I asked Elder Brian after the lesson when he thought of asking her that question. He said it was during the closing prayer. I was just like no way me too, word for word! It was a cool testimony to us that the Spirit will give us very specific promptings. We just need to be in tune with the Holy Ghost.
Everything is great here in Portland and the weather is even getting nice!
Have a great week!
Elder Hill
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