Great news! Brett Swanstrom got baptized. I was lucky enough to attend his baptism this Saturday in Snellville. Goodness, I can't even express how much I miss that ward. They are just absolutely incredible. Bishop, President Roberts, Brother Tackett, and Brother TeWalt were there. It was so great being able to see all of them again. I miss them so much. Brother Rucker, one of my other favorite members, is Brett's girlfriend's brother in law. He is the one that really sparked the interest about the Gospel in Brett's life. Brother Rucker was not a member of the church when him and his wife got married. Brett knew Brother Rucker before he was a member. He saw how much this Gospel has blessed Brother Rucker's life. Brett has had a rough past has really made some incredible changes in his life. His baptism was just one of many leaps that he has made to becoming a better person. It is however the most important one he has made thus far. Brett has such an open heart. He was so much fun to teach because he just got it. I love teaching people who just get it. The message of the Restoration and Plan of Salvation just make so much sense. When you teach him you can see just the pieces of the puzzle connecting in his head. I love Brett, The Remund Family, and The Rucker Family.
We had a great experience this week. On Monday night we drove down to the mission home in Fayetteville to spend a two day boot camp with the mission Presidency. All of the zone leaders throughout the mission attended. Goodness, it was a great and humbling experience. I haven't had a chance to get to know a lot of the missionaries that attended this meeting. I knew a few of them pretty well and it was awesome. They were all just incredible and I learned so much from them. We had some good laughs and some good experiences. In the mornings we went on a run with President Harding and got to have some cool lessons. The first morning we went into the forest and President Harding starting to talk about the golden plates and Moroni. He then told a missionary to move a log and push around some dirt. You could see that there was something buried under the foliage. In the hole was some Book of Mormons that he gave out to us. It was a pretty cool little unexpected lesson. One of the best parts about being in the Eastern part of the United States is that the forests here really look like where Joseph had the First Vision. So I really felt like I was experiencing part of our Church's history. The next morning we went on a run and when we reached the lake we were running to President Harding handed us envelopes that had a letter from either our parents or from him in it. He invited us to go find a quiet spot and go and read. It was a very good spiritual experience. So relaxing. It was so nice to have an unexpected letter from my parents. I love them so much. My favorite part of the boot camp was President Jewkes training. President Gary Jewkes is a leadership trainer. He is a big deal in the business leadership world. He gave us a training on Franklin Covey's Speed of Trust cards. This is the second time that I have received the training from him, and I love it every time. The tools that he gives to communicate effectively are priceless. After his training combined with the spiritual experiences that I had throughout the meeting I felt like I left such a better person and missionary. It was however a very humbling experience. Being around such incredible missionaries sometimes is difficult. I was sort of envious of the missionaries that have so much time left and have so much more time to grow and progress. I am near the end... I know that I am not done growing or progressing, but I am almost done doing it in this sort of environment. I just don't think that missionaries really know or understand how quickly this time goes. And when missionaries would tell me that, I wouldn't ever believe them. I wish that I would have. Every second that goes by you won't be able to get back. You truly have to love every second of it.
We found some pretty awesome people this week. While doing a blitz with an Elder named Elder Berge. He's a great Elder. We found a family, the Arrynt family. Just an incredible family. We went over with their neighbor, Brother Knox. Brother Knox is the coolest. He is from Jamaica and is just so awesome. We took him over and a miracle happened. As we started to talk with Stewart (The Dad) he mentioned how his Comcast internet is down and how frustrated he was. Brother Knox said, "Well hey, I used to work for comcast. Let's go take a look!" Within ten minutes Brother Knox found the problem and fixed their internet. Instant best friends. We had a great lesson on the Restoration and they are really excited about all of the things that we had to share.
