Awesome Miracles

 Hello everyone! This week was so cool and we had some awesome miracles.

   One of the miracles came with a priesthood blessing. Last Pday we got a call from a pretty distraught member whose wife, who isn't a member, was in the hospital. He asked if we could come give her a blessing so we gladly went! Priesthood blessings are possibly my favorite part of being on a mission. When we got to the hospital she was convulsing and couldn't speak at all. The doctors had just told our member that she probably wouldn't live.  We still gave her a priesthood blessing and her husband as well, and in both blessings we felt very strongly and blessed them that she would live and be healed.

   We kept in touch throughout the week, and we did a fast for her to be healed. She is now doing so much better! She's not completely healed, but she's no longer in critical condition and keeps improving. God's power and Christ's ability to heal is so real!

    I went on an exchange to the YSA elders area. The college campus around here is still closed for winter break, and so it's been a pretty slow area. I went with Elder Hoffman, and this is the beginning of his second transfer. We worked real hard and saw two cool miracles! The first one was on the campus. We had only one copy of The Book of Mormon, and there is no one on campus. But we prayed that God could put just one person in our path, and then we went. Literally 10 seconds after the prayer, one guy, probably the only human on the whole campus, walks out of a building right toward us. We started talking and he was super interested! We gave him The Book of Mormon and scheduled a return appointment right there. Super awesome!

    The second one was we were in an apartment complex looking for someone who lived there. We couldn't find their door for the life of us and it was getting late so we decided to leave and try later. But then as we were leaving we got the strongest impression to keep looking. We finally found his door haha, and the guy we were looking for didn't live there. But the guy who did live there said that he had been practicing paganism for the last 10 years. Just the night before, he prayed for the first time and felt strongly to come to Jesus. And then we show up at his door! We set up another meeting with him. Such an amazing miracle! God is so aware of us.

    Our area has been fairly slow recently so we've been on a huge finding grind. We finally found some success with a part member family. The mom, Valerie, is a member and she lives alone with her daughter Aaralyn. Valerie hasn't been to church in at least 25 years and she has written a 75 page discourse disproving the book of mormon. Super interesting haha. She's had some really difficult experiences with family and it causes her to struggle with the church.

    We went there for the second time, and had a really powerful lesson about having a personal relationship with Jesus and what that does for us. We talked about prayer and the Book of Mormon. It was really powerful, and Valerie started laughing saying she might come back because of us haha. Valerie also said she almost came to church the other week. But the coolest part is when we were leaving, her daughter Aaralyn stopped and asked for a copy of The Book of Mormon because she's really "intrigued" by what we teach. We're hoping we can start making some good progress soon.

    We also had an awesome stake conference with Elder Dunn, who gave the conference talk one percent better. It was an incredible experience to hear his knowledge! I love how well the general authorities represent Christ. It always makes me wanna improve its SO cool to be around.

    Sorry for the longer email! Love yall!

Love, Elder Ryan