Manti Temple!

Well thanks mom and qp for the emails! It's nice to hear that my little spiel on member/missionary work helped you out mother! It's funny because we got a picture of us at the Smith's when I first got to the area but she never sent the photo! So we took another one and I guess it got to you just in time. Awesome! But yeah I was glad I wrote all that down last week because this Sunday was of course the fifth Sunday of the month, so naturally we got about 4 or 5 phone calls of requests to do missionary presentations for combined meetings. We were able to schedule in three of them, two primary's and a regular priesthood/RS meeting. The latter was sandwiched with the two primary's haha so we had a pretty fun Sabbath yesterday! 

The first primary went okay and we just introduced ourselves and asked all the little kiddos how they can be missionaries. They said "teach them about the gospel!!!" and "teach them about Jesus!" and even one little girl said "Jesus!" haha so that was fun. The adult meeting went well. We laid it down to them Elder Holland style and invited them to try something they've never tried before, to get out of their comfort zone and go and invite someone to participate in the gospel. We shared pretty much all of my thoughts from my last email and then some. Then we did some role plays and they got to practice "opening their mouths." They really enjoyed it and everyone learned something specific that they needed to better fulfill their missionary responsibilities. We told them that we depend on them and we cannot do everything alone, so we're expecting some more help from the members. 

Then we went to the other primary and kinda combined the other two meetings by introducing ourselves, talking about the song "I Hope they Call me on a Mission" and how they can be missionaries right now, and then we did some role plays with them too! haha it was the best. We asked for volunteers and of course the whole room lifted up their hands at once, so we picked a few of them to practice inviting each other to church and to watch conference. Cutest role plays ever! haha The Bishop and Ward Mission Leader added their primary-level input as well and we got to sing some songs and it was great! I'm going back to primary after my mission!

So this week we finally went to the Manti temple! Wow what a treat! It's a beautiful temple, I highly recommend it. It was my first live session, which was interesting. I was really looking forward to that! It's cool to see how much better the dialog and presentation flows when it's live. Gears kicked into place and things made more sense. There was even very light comical sense to it due to the fact of human error, not that I could do any better at all. Satan was pretty funny haha he was played by an old man in a black suit, and he was very passive and nonchalant haha. Anyway I'll stop right there before I go too far. But it was a good experience nonetheless! And I got to chat with Elder Holmstead at the veil and Gomez in the celestial room and reminisce on our first temple experiences of our missions. It was awesome!

Well, to follow up with our little miracle in the making, it's still in the making haha. Last week we knocked at the door and this week we've been trying to hear Christ's footsteps inside. We can definitely hear Him. He's coming soon! We met with Stephanie and her LA husband on Thursday after the temple trip. Holy cow...they are elect and honest of heart but man they have a lot of questions and concerns about the church! Thank goodness for solid fellowshippers. Bishop Shelley knows what he's doing and answered every single one of them on the spot in a calm and dignified, confident manner (i.e. why can't women hold the priesthood? why isn't there physical evidence of the BofM? why do you believe in three kingdoms instead of heaven/hell? why can't we drink coffee or tea? why did the church practice polygamy...isn't that adultery? and so forth.) It was a good experience for all of us. They got their questions answered confidently, Bishop gained more of their trust, and we learned in greater detail the answers to those questions. We met again last night and started up the first lesson, and they are progressing well.

Well I best be off to get a haircut! Until next week,

Love,

Elder Payne!

p.s. It's getting colder up here! We froze in the rain earlier this week...it caught us off guard haha.

p.p.s. Please watch and apply the words of general conference!