Reach out to one this Christmas!

     Hello family!!  Such a great week. I am so blessed to be serving as a missionary and to be an instrument in the hands of the Lord. 
     This week, Elder Porter of the Seventy visited our mission.  We had a wonderful Zone conference with him.  As I sat in that meeting, my thoughts were upon the Savior.  I received wonderful revelation for me personally, my area and investigators.  Like many others during this time of the year, my heart is stirred towards Jesus Christ.  He was the main focus of our meeting and one thing that we talked about was the Doctrine of Christ.  He talked about the straight and narrow path and that without the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Atonement, we would never be able to return home and partake of the tree of life, which is the Love of God. I felt motivated to go out Focus, Find, Teach, and Baptize. There are so many of our brothers and sisters without this knowledge, and what great responsibility the Lord has placed in our hands to bring His children home. I know that Jesus Christ lives, I have felt His love and the power of his Atoning sacrifice. 

     We have been focusing in our zone to use Elder Ballard's Apostolic promise with the members that "if each of us reach out to one person from now until Christmas millions will feel the Savior's love". That's all the Lord is asking just "one" person! As we draw nearer to Jesus Christ I am assured that many people will notice the difference in our countenance, and will be drawn closer to us as we reach out to them. 
     This week we had 6 of our investigators at church and are preparing for the baptism of two of our investigators. Both are teenagers and have such a great desire to do what the Lord wants them to do. They loved church this week! The Lord is blessing us with many prepared people. 
     I went on exchange this week in Fresno to the YSA ward, and it was a looong day! It was freezing, no one was answering doors and we could find no one on the street. The day followed like that until the last hour of the night. Elder Toth and I stopped and prayed, asking the Lord where we needed to go. We were impressed to go over the ward list and we found a name and went to his home. We knocked and a young man let us in. It was a house that rents out to college students that sale solar panels. Before I walked in I saw some Utah license plates outside and thought most of these men must be Mormons which they were, but they had no interest in hearing us. They called one of their friends who was upstairs who came down to listen to us. He was surprised to see us and said he hadn't seen the missionaries over in a long time. He told us he was 24 years old, that he had been a member his whole life, had at one time prepared to serve a mission, but fell from that path and had made some wrong decisions. Those decsions lead him to have many questions about the church, and the prophet Joseph Smith. He was happy to have us over and said he would like us to share a message with him. We talked about the Book of Mormon. I shared my personal witness to the truthfulness of that book. As we testfied, the atmosphere changed! The look on his face changed and he felt different. We invited him to pray about the Book of Mormon and he said not once in his life growing up in the church had he done so. He agreed and was so grateful for that visit. He knew we had been sent their for a reason. I'm humbled to know how much the Lord knows each and everyone of us and what it will take to get us to return to that path that leads to eternal life! 
     I know He lives, this is His church and that Jesus Christ is our Savior! I look forward to this next week and seeing what the Lord has in store for us! Have a great week.


Love,
Elder Tanner Aiken