I KNOW that Elder Bednar is one called of God himself. The quiet but piercing spirit in the room was like fire circling the room.

So this week was a very busy week for me and Elder Maga! I guess first I'll start with Tuesday when Elder Bednar visited.

So for all of those here who aren't members of the church, Elder Bednar is one of the living 12 apostles. So just like back when Jesus Christ called 12 Apostles back in His time to help Him with His work, we have 12 apostles in this church who are called of God to help the Prophet with his work. So they are just insanely smart, spiritual, powerful people, and no, they are not paid for what they are called to do.

Anyways, Elder Bednar came, and when an Apostle comes to your mission area, it's a HUGE deal, so EVERYONE was super excited for it. We all expected him to come in and lecture us for two hours or so on how to be good missionaries. But he got up to the pulpit he talked to us like you would talk to a friend. He asked us questions, conversed with us, and let us ask him questions. I was fortunate enough to sit in the front of the stands right next to him so I could focus a lot better and not have any distractions. It was a really neat experience. One of the biggest lessons that I learned was actually not about being a missionary at all. The greatest thing I took out of his visit was how important it is to parent your children correctly, allowing them to do things for themselves and allowing them to exercise their agency. A lot of things happened there that would just take a long time to explain, but I do wanna say that I KNOW that that man is one called of God himself. The quiet but piercing spirit in the room was like fire circling the room.  I also need to add EVERYTHING that Elder Bednar did was an exact mirror of what my dad would do. I'm not kidding. While he was in the chapel with us, I was on the front row like 6 feet in front of him the whole time cause I was the piano player, and I just watched him the whole time. He speaks, moves, acts, talks and does everything just like my dad. It was literally like my dad was standing in front of me the whole time, like dang, it was so comforting!

So this week was supposed to be our baptism for Twinkle, but during her interview, some problems surfaces that made us postpone the baptism for this week. I honestly love the fact that we interview people before they are baptized. It's such an important decision, and we have to make sure that they are willing to follow Jesus Christ until the day they die. I don't know how the religions are back home, but over here certain religions just baptize anyone who says they want to be baptized. But for us, they need to go through a process of repentance so that we can see that they are fully ready to take upon themselves the name of Jesus Christ himself.

We also had a ton of service projects this week, one of which was building a slaughter house for pigs, so that's tons of fun! The members of this branch are really progressing. All of them are really coming together in a united effort to find more people to bring into the fold of God. They are doing their meetings now like they should, their sacrament meeting is more cordial, and they are just being strengthened in their overall testimonies, and that really makes me proud of them!

Yep! that's the duck we killed...pretty tasty

I think my time in Irosin is almost up. I think in this next transfer in three weeks I'm probably gonna leave, which makes me really sad, but I guess I'll see where the Lord wants me to go when it's time. Anyways, that's pretty much it for this week! I don't have much pictures this week, and for that I am sorry and I'll make sure to take more this week! I love you all, have a good week!!

Elder Austin Cook

We attended another church service at another church,
just to see what they were all about

Picture with the minister from the other church we attended