October 13.

GOOO Utes!!! Man it's good to hear about a strong win.. About time.. So things here are going really good. Elder Haile has come here ready to work and to turn this place into a branch. Yesterday in Church we had 10 men there who can all potentially hold the preisthood. As of now we have baptized and reactivated enough people to be a branch we just need to help all of them progress a little bit more and help them to be ready and strong members... Also we will for sure keep baptizing and reactivating! 

The wedding this week went good... The baptism was a different story though.. Their family threw a wedding after party for them and they decided at 1:00 am after the spirit had gone to bed to drink a little bit of wine..Hopefully here in the next couple weeks they'll repent and get there. 

Also this week I wanted to share a story with you all about the book of mormon and the power that it contains. Back in the day when I was a young man I never read the book of mormon and I never wanted to.. I don't know why but that was how I felt and during family reading I usually was half asleep.. When people asked me where I was in my BOM reading I always said "in the middle of Alma" and then everyone always responded "oh yeah alma sure is a long book" I knew nothing about alma I just heard everyone else say that they were in the middle of alma..

  I promise that I have repented for that and I have had a huge change of heart. The Book of Mormon is for our days and if we aren't reading it we are only effecting ourselves. Our mission has started working a lot with in-actives and what I have noticed with just about every case is that none of them were reading the book of mormon.. This usually resulted in them not praying, not going to church and eventually giving up completely..   Please read the book of mormon everyday.. preferably 30 minutes.. This is eternal life. It starts here and I know that if we are all ready we will be stronger in the church, we will be happier people and we will have the strength to endure to the end.. In lehi's vision only those who held firmely to the iron rod made it the tree of life. Lets all hold a little bit firmer and be a little bit stronger each day! 

(to the mission pres)As for Santa Maria things here are truly being blessed. This week during my division with Elder Christensen my faith was strengthened about the importance of inviting. We ended up running into an inactive member named João who has been away from the church for a couple of months now. We sat down with him, got to know him a little bit and realized that the reason he fell away was because of problems with commandments and he was having problems with repentance. He decided he wanted to come back to church and fell that sweet spirit that he used to feel.. We were getting ready to finish when I got the impression to ask him if he had priesthood... He said he had the aaronic and really wanted to receive the melquisedeque but he wasn't ready and didn't feel like he could get there. I invite him as simple and I could, "João, voce irá se preparar para receber o sacerdócio de melquisedeque?" In that moment I felt the spirit testify very strongly about what was said.. He sat there for a minute and that said "vou...... vou.... vou vou vou vou vou vou" It was amazing to see that change happen in his heart in basically the blink of an eye.

Love you all,

Elder Edwards