Email September 8, 2014

Hello family and friends, It's been a good week. Nick and Steve are still looking forward to Saturday September 13th at 5:00 pm as their baptism! I am so excited for them! About a month ago an active member family's eight year old daughter was being baptized and the Dooleys came to see it. A couple nights later, Steve was saying how touched he was by the baptism and that he cried because he loves the covenant that is being made and the promises we receive if we are faithful to those covenants. He cried and it wasn't even his own baptism! I can't wait for him at his own baptism. He deserves it so much and I love them both so much, I can't wait for them this Saturday. It's going to be incredible. Jennifer lost a good friends a few days ago and so we went to her house as soon as possible to see her. She was doing okay. Over text she said all she wanted to do was cry, but when we showed up she was doing seemingly fine. She was drinking like she does half the time and we kinda just talked about what she did, not necessarily the gospel, but she was the one to bring up that we were going to take her on a church tour and wanted to do it soon. So we have one set up for Thursday night! We left her with a couple of pages to read out of the Restoration pamphlet and we told her we would be going over it at the church tour, which I'm so excited for because she'll (hopefully) be sober and modest and we'll have a member present and we'll be able to feel the Spirit so much stronger in the chapel! It'll be sweet, I can't wait. Brad we couldn't meet with this week because we were doing service on Saturday but we're planning on teaching the Restoration next. Hopefully he'll be sober enough to understand. He's funny about when he wants to meet. Our first talk with him he said the next time he wants to meet was sometime in the afternoon. So we showed up at 2ish and he was already drunk. He said "We said afternoon so I was expecting you guys at 12:01!!" Every meeting with him after that, we've been there at 12:01! There is some sad news this week. Very sad news. A week or two ago, David and Nicky lost their baby at 9 1/2 weeks into the pregnancy. :( They didn't find out until about 11 weeks either, so they are very shaken up. They are Christian and believe in Christ and God, and they believe that they will be helped through this trial. Which is great! They will be helped because of their faith in Christ I have no doubt about that. But we're hoping that they will ask us and their neighbors, the Chittocks (our ward mission leader's family), about our beliefs concerning the life after this one and things of similar subjects, because I feel it will bring them so much peace and comfort. We love them, they love us, and we all just want to help each other out. :) Keep them in your prayers please! Other than those things, we still haven't been able to pick up any new investigators. We did get a few referrals though and we're excited to contact them. Things are going well, still learning lots and loving lots! The mission is all around crazy. In so many ways. It's amazing. :) I love you guys and wish you all the best this coming week! Go make miracles happen with your unshakable faith! Love you! Love, Elder Cevering

Email September 1, 2014

Hello Everyone! I hope you all have had a great week! This last one was pretty good except for today, actually. We were going to go gold panning with a member from the neighboring ward with the other missionaries, but it took forever to drive to the member's place, more to the first stream (which we didn't pan in because it was too crowded), so back to get our cars from the member's place, to the second stream (about another 20 minute drive farther away) and can't pan there because it's private property and by that time it was too late for us to try somewhere else because we have dinner in an hour and a half. So by the end of today we'll have used double our mileage limit for the day, need to buy gas, and have used most of our day in driving. Great. Worst pday ever. Blech. But! We have a family who wants to meet with us tonight after dinner so pray that they will want to investigate the church again! They were former investigators with promise, but dropped for an unknown reason so we went back over and we set it up for tonight. So pray that they will want to investigate! So this week was just another adventurous week to add to the beginning of Elder Raab's mission! We ran into some really nice and interesting people (title story to come soon) and had some pretty cool experiences with investigators as well! To start: we had dinner and a lesson with the Dooley's this week, but when we got there the parents weren't home yet. So we went outside and played catch with their three kids in the apartment complex's parking lot until they got home. When they got home and while they were deciding what to do for dinner, Riley (Steve Dooley's daughter who had expressed a desire to be baptized in the past) walked up to Steve and Elder Raab while they were talking on the stairs and Steve told Elder Raab that they had been wanting to ask Riley's mom if she would give Riley permission to be taught and baptized. Steve told Riley to ask her mom while she was staying there this week and so hopefully Riley will. And Steve and Kat (Sister Dooley) think that if Riley asks her mom will let her because it shows it's something that she wants to do not that she's being forced to do. So that's good. But the coolest part comes in right after that when Elder Raab told Steve that we had been praying as a companionship that Riley's mom's heart would be softened. It all just kind of lined up, it was so cool! So keep Riley and her mom in your prayers!!! Nick and Steve are both still excited for their baptism on the 13th. Steve is as strong as ever! It's so amazing. But keep them in your prayers. The parents tend to lack patience with their kids who act immaturely so things have gotten pretty heated sometimes when we are over there and the kids are being immature for the missionaries and the parents get annoyed. It got scary when the parents started to get at each other too...but they recognize that it's all just stuff being put into their lives by the adversary so it's great to know that they know they're just being tested and that they'll be able to push through it. But please keep them in your prayers, they could use them. We finished up tarring the cracks in Jennifer's roof and went on a walk with her and talked about the gospel and the Book of Mormon and whatnot. She agreed to read the Restoration pamphlet and Book of Mormon and also to take a tour of our church building, to get her more acquainted and comfortable with it. She has a troubled past and doesn't trust many people because of it, but she loves us and trusts us a ton. She told us that most of her family and almost no friends know where she lives because she has that much trust issues, but she's totally fine if we show up whenever! It's so awesome! We are working with her slowly, but she has amazing potential. We started meeting with a guy named Brad who is...eccentric. He is over 50, doesn't wear a shirt, reads tons of "ancient texts," drinks a ton, and knows how to work "magic" because he bought a sacred book (online) that "only people worthy of its power" can hold and read from. Is reading the Book of Mormon though so that's a great first step! Title story! We were out OYMing the downtown area one night and a lady approached us asking if we were Jehovah's Witness. We said no, she said good, we started talking. One of the first things she said was "I was clinically dead for two days. But I was washed in the blood of Christ and rose on the third day." She also said, "Now listen to me guys, I don't want to be famous so don't go telling everyone...but I'm a prophet." She said that the correct religion was Baptist because Christ was baptized, "by John the...BAPTIST" and said every other church follows "the enemy." She said that Mormons have trouble giving things up (pause for a second: we follow the 10 Commandments, Law of Chastity, Word of Wisdom, church callings, the missionaries' white handbook, etc., etc., if someone says we have trouble giving things up...they must have us mixed up with something else haha) and that we fear lots of things, one of them being "the enemy." When we started to reply and said "Satan," she cut us off with "the enemy" coupled with a hand motion of pushing something off into the distance. We (really she) kept talking about a bunch of stuff like how our Bible doesn't say the same thing as the other Bibles, which we politely proved her wrong about, and how the Book of Mormon doesn't teach the same doctrine as the Bible, which we politely proved her wrong about again, and about how we haven't asked the Holy Spirit about the true church, which when we both started to testify that we had and how we had received our answers, she cut off the conversation. So to close this horrendously long email, I'll share a quick story: When we were over at the Dooley's last night we were talking with Steve and Kat after the kids had gone to bed, we talked about life, about the church, about tons of random and weird stuff. Something super funny was said and we all started laughing so hard and Sister Dooley started to SNORT! It was so hilarious!!! I was sitting on their couch leaned back busting a gut with my eyes closed when all of a sudden something I can't explain whispered to/impressed on me that I truly do love them, that they are amazing, and that I am so grateful for them in my life. I felt extreme love for them and an extreme love for what I am doing. I was laughing but as the fit ended, my eyes were welling up because of the the incredible feeling I had. I know this church is true. That love is real and it is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. That God loves me, that He loves the Dooley's, that He loves each of us more than we can imagine. And I love sharing that with the world. Missionary work is the bestest ever in time! I love you guys! Have an amazing week! Love, Elder Jacob Cevering P.S. Happy Labor Day!!! Sent from my iPad