Letter #35 . . . "Be Still My Soul"

"Oh Hey Mom ..." (In that one voice :)) 
 

Tanner and Elder Reber

I loved the letter. I love hearing about all the stuff happening at home!

This week was pretty sweet. Elder Reber is awesome. In our mission there's no such thing as the 'senior companion.' President hates that label haha. I feel like we're still both learning from each other! Reber and I have been focusing on finding some more solid people to teach. This week we did a lot of knocking on potential's doors, and random ones. We found a few solid people but most wanted nothing to do with us. We met some nice people, met some hardcore bible bashers etc. There are lots of 'born again' fanatics out here, who think to be saved you confess Jesus to be your Lord, then do whatever the poop you
want the rest of your life. This week was pretty exhausting, but it felt good to work and was fun at the same time. Reber and I get a long great and have fun with each other!

This week we got a new shipment of Book of Mormons, so we decided to give them out to as many people as we could. Some of the highlights:
We gave one to the ice cream man named Jarome, one Spanish one to a
cleaning lady in a hotel, and one Vietnamese one for a random  
Vietnamese family! It was pretty sweet.

This week I focused on trying to get better at talking with everyone.
A lot of times I miss opportunities to share with someone because I
feel like it'd be weird to stop them and talk. I could see some
improvement in myself this week, and had many cool experiences that I
wouldn't have if I didn't go out of my comfort zone a little.

Beautiful Independence sunset!

Yesterday I sang and played "Be Still My Soul" in Sacrament meeting with a girl in the ward named Remi Lamb! She's awesome. She has a recording of it that I'll try to get to y'all. But until then I'll send you a version we did just practicing at her house!  (Here is the link)  It went great tho! 
 
I was also able to play the piano in a member's home for our dinner 
message. They have some cute and energetic kids with a 2 second attention span, so we thought it'd help to play a song. They listened through the whole thing!

Ryan Matthews, that awesome guy I've talked about, finally got back to us and let us come over for a lesson. He's a super genuine guy, but he loves his Bible stuff, and is one of the born again fanatics I talked about. When we sat down, he pulled out a bunch of notes he had taken about issues he had with the church that he found on iffy websites. He had a bunch of out of context statements from the journal of flippen discourses that went against one specific verse in the bible.., it was tough. We just testified that we know the Book of Mormon is true, and if he'll read it with an open heart he will see that it doesn't contradict the Bible at all. He's an awesome guy, super nice to us, but he's got a lot of stumbling blocks causing him to be blind to what we're trying to share. Sooooo hopefully he'll give the Book of Mormon a chance, because that book is perfect!

Love y'all, stay schweeet.

Elder Townsend

Sent from Zion