Elder Emanuelson October 2009

Dear Family and Friends,
God is great! That’s what I have been wanting to shout out for this past week. It has been hard because I haven’t stayed in my last two areas very long. I guess President Tate just wants to keep me on my toes for the last little bit of my mission. My last two areas were fine, but when you only stay for 6 weeks you really don’t get to see anyone progress in the gospel. But I won’t bore you with just telling you about my new area, because really it is an old area. A really old area, it was actually my very first area and it will probably be my last area. It has been really cool to come back..
and see some of the people I use to know. To my surprise more people remembered me than I thought they would. But the greatest thing has been to be able to see the Agee’s again. When my trainer and I were here the first time we weren’t teaching a whole lot of people, but towards the end of my stay here the first time we had found a way cool family. We taught the Agee’s a few times and then I had gotten transferred to a new area. Then 6 months later the mom was baptized and actually just this past July did the two kids get baptized. Now they are the coolest members. All the missionaries love them because Sister Agee feeds us all the time and Alex goes on like all day team-ups with us. It is just so awesome to see the change in their lives. It took about 2 years but it was well worth it for them in the long run. It is just neat to see someone that you first knocked on their door and then taught them the gospel and now a year or so later they are fully active members of the church who have fully embraced the gospel. Alex is a senior in High school and plans on serving a mission when he is 19. Sister Agee’s testimony is so cool. She has a Jehovah witness and Baptist background so a lot of things we taught her, she said she had to take on faith because she didn’t quite know if they were true, but she knew the book of Mormon was true. So many other people will let one little thing they hear trip up their testimony of the book of Mormon. Just like that quote, “Don’t let things you don’t know shake your testimony of things you do know.”
Yesterday we were blessed to have Elder Kukchi (sp?), of the seventy, come to one of our multi-zones and train us on several things. He is from Japan, but speaks very well English. It was the most spiritual missionary meeting I have ever been too. One of the best parts was that Demar Bennett drove down from Huntsville to attend the conference with us. It was so great to see Demar. I hadn’t seen him in over a year. He has grown so much in the gospel. He drove us around after the conference so we wouldn’t have to use our miles, and when he taught with us he was teaching like he was already a return missionary. He is working and going to college right now up in Huntsville and will be putting his mission papers in after the first of the year. Completely different than when we found him in the Projects over in Oxford. Anyways things are going good. Hope y’all are doing well.
Elder James Emanuelson