My week was great! It was a lot of fun and went by real fast! Some exciting news I guess. Kelsie Adamsons an investigator we have been working with a lot is changing a ton! She didn't know anything about God when we first met her and wouldn't pray or come to church. Well, she has been praying and took the initiative to teach her son how to pray and had an amazing experience. She is now thinking about baptism (wouldn't before) and came to church last Sunday!!! Truly amazing. :D She has been emotional with all the change. Its kind of funny to watch because we know where its coming from but she is still confused because "she never cries" hehe. The spirit does that sometimes. ;)

Other exciting news for Jamie. I sent a letter this morning. Its got something in it! So hopefully that makes it there. ;) But we got a new mini missionary who will be with us for a week! He is 16 and from columbia city. His name is Brother Matthew Kennedy and is super cool! This week was truly great. 

Wednesday we will be going to the temple for the last "goodbye" to the Porters. It will be sad but I am stoked for President and Sister Welch. They will be great! 

It seems like things are going real well back home though. I am super happy about that!

Youth Conference should be a great experience for Justin. I am excited for him! I loved youth conference. It was great! :D

We found 16 new investigators last week which is awesome! I think the highest of my mission if I remember correctly for 1 week. :) Things have been going really well here other than that too, Brad came out teaching with us for the first time and loved it! And he has got his temple recommend, the priesthood and is ready to go to the temple Saturday. :) It's going to be such a  sweet experience, so excited for him. And me too, I love the temple. :) When was the last time you and dad went to the temple? OH! How has the scripture reading and praying as a family been going?  Lets see, what else this week? We had zone meeting which was really good, and today as a zone we went and played a game called goal ball. Its a game for blind people! At a facility for handicapped people down in ft. wayne and a member works there so we got to go play. :)
Our zone broke a zone record and taught 99 lessons to investigators with a member present. Our zone of 3 personally had 39 of them, us and the auburn elders had 15 each and the kendallville sisters had 9. But they also had 1 baptism which was super cool! So I did a baptismal interview for an Amber McGee a couple weeks ago and she asked me to baptize her! So that was really neat, she is awesome and I was so thrilled when she asked me too. :)   Also on Saturday we got to take Brad Barnes and Mark Kimpel to the temple and that was a real sweet experience. They had such a great time. Mark Kimpel also got a blessing from President Loechinguer and we gave it to him in the baptistry so that was pretty neat! It was funny though, one of the older fellows that I baptized in the temple couldn't keep his knees down and would get super stiff (in his 80's probably) and the temple worker was like "you just need to do it quick, just push and shove him down" haha! But his knees kept coming up so on our like 4th failed attempt we had Mark come in to help out by holding his legs under, it was cool :) It was an awesome week, still growing lots and loving the work!

Transfers are also this week and there is very little change in the mission it seems like with President Welch coming in the last week of June. Only 2 people in our zone are leaving and that's the 2 that are dying and going home. So I'm staying!! Wahoo, I love this place so much. :) And my companion, he is great!

Anyways, I hope you have a wonderful week, I love you!

A cool experience from yesterday. I was saying a prayer in the afternoon and asked heavenly father for an opportunity to excersize the priesthood yesterday and looking at our plans didn't seem like there would be an opportunity. Well I was prompted to look over our assignments to go visit some inactive elders. So I called 5 of them and on the 5th one he answered and wanted a blessing. So we got to drive out and do that and it was just really neat and another testimony builder for sure. :) 

Also, some real exciting news!!! Brad Barnes is going to get baptised this Saturday!!!! He is such a stud. I love that man. Super excited for him, he is also going to go the Temple on the 11th of June which will be awesome! So that is my exciting news for the week! :D Also I have a request if you feel alright with it. I was reading my patriarcle blessing this morning and really had a desire to read yours and dads so I thought I would ask, but knowing that its very personal it is okay if you would not like me to read them, but would love if I can. :)

Also a  quick funny story, one of the speakers this sunday went up to speak and was saying how his talk subject was trails and was like "that is an interesting subject but okay" So he was speaking on trails for a couple minutes then said "Oh, and then I felt I should look at the card that says the subject on it again.... OH! It says trials not trails!" and then the 1st counselor made a huge sigh of relief and everybody just busted up laughing, it was so funny! Elder Jackson (he is an elder couples missionary)  got him really good. it was hilarious. Anyways, thats my stuff for the week! Love you. :D

This week was awesome! Lots of good stuff. Brad is now a member of the church of jesus christ of latter day saints!!! There was some opposition but we got him there with the guidance of the holy ghost and a little faith. ;) So this last week my mission/life has changed. That meeting on monday that I was invited to was real powerful! I went through kind of a 1 1/2 of refiners fire, then some change the rest of the meeting, we got back home at 10:45pm. Then the next morning we had a another stake training/work shop in which the spirit again was pushing me a lot. My heart and desires changed during those meetings. Then I felt a prompting "All this change is going to be really hard, get a blessing" So I went up to President and asked for a blessing and he was like "what for?" all I said was "I am ready to change" that was all that was needed to be said, he sat me down and began and it was WOW, holy cow it was sweet! :) I recorded it and have it all written down and it is neat. :)  then after the blessing was something pretty scary but cool. He turned to me, grabbed my shoulders and said to me, looking me right in the eyes. "Elder, there is noone in this mission that can do more than you, focus! I love you" then pushed me out of the room. It was a crazy past couple of days, and Elder Rickey and I had our weekly planning and discussed many things and changed a lot of things and we are changing a lot! and seeing a lot of Gods grace and miracles in our work. This past week we found 11 new investigators and received 10 referrals (thats a lot!). Anyways, this week has just been super super cool, and I'm super happy.

The weather has been so fun this past week, it was such nice weather with 2 real cool storms. One of them was just pouring rain and huge hail it was nuts, then yesterday with had a big lightning and thunder storm which was pretty fun. Spring is fun out here, i love all this rain :)

My testimony is much stronger in multiple ways and my faith as well. it is great stuff! So this last week i got invited to go to leadership council which is for zone leaders and sister training leaders and those that are invited, it was such a neat experience. I learned so much and found what i need to work on next, good good stuff!  I am getting transferred though, i dont know where and if im training or district leader or anything like that. If i am i havent been told yet. But i will try and have someone send a picture with my new adress as soon as i can tomorrow. Sorry if i forget though. And as for a package, no candy please. Im trying so hard to eat healthier and am doing really good. I was getting super bad with my eating habits for a little and needed to stop. So i made a deal with myself, im not eating prepackaged candy. But i can have anything baked or cooked and things like that. And as for Soda im only having it if im at a members home that offers me some. But i can't really think of anythings at the moment for a package. I will need some more stamps soon.

This week was pretty good :) This week we got to do a good bit of things and it was wonderful! We had Zone Conference which was wonderful, very motivating and revelatory. President Porter took like 1- 1 1/2 hours that he wasn't planning and spending it talking in depth about what the pre-existance was like and it was super cool! He is so awesome, i swear that man knows so much :D I hope i know that much one day, that would be neat. Then wednesday night our ward mission leader invited us to go to the youth fishing trip last and this wednesday and the first trip was a lot of fun. There is a friend of one of the members who has a private lake that is overstocked so 2x a year he invites the youth to go fishing there to help get some of the fish gone. And we got permission to go because of nonmembers there and trying to break the ice and whatnot it was fun! But of course i had no luck like usual. We had probably 15 people there and not 1 person caught under 4 fish, everyone caught mostly 8-15 fish, (companion got 9, 7 bass 2 bluegill) except for me, i caught 0 haha! I swear i am cursed, we will see how this wednesday goes i guess. We got Sam coming who is one of our investigators being baptised on the 4th of june. He is 18 years old.  Our other investigator Brad is now on date for the 4th of june as well. And he is awesome! They are both super golden investigators :) Can't wait for the fun to happen, baptisms are so great being able to watch people enter into the fold :)   Then saturday again we got to help Mark again to help him fix up his semi truck which needed the suspension replaced and 2 more bushings and ubolts. We did it much quicker this time though, he was very relieved because it needed done bad and he has no time in the week to do it or he cant work so it helped a lot. And the 4 of us ate 2 massive pizzas and 1 thing of cheese bread, it was yummy! :D Anyways, it was a great week, love you lots!

The baptism did happen and it was amazing. She is 76 so I felt bad dunking her underneath the water as I performed the baptism. As she started to go down she didn't plug her nose haha and almost didn't go all the way and the thought that went through my head was "I'm not making her have to be dunked 2x". So I extended my arms and pushed her all the way under and checked that her knees were under and she was good to go so I pulled her back up. haha, it was kinda funny. haha but I felt bad. But she was baptised!!! Then confirmed the next day. It was wonderful. Joyce is great! And things with Elder Holman are going really well. We have gotten much better at communicating with one another and have both changed a lot! Its really neat. His whole high school experience he was to school on time only 3x and on the mission we record morning schedules (if we are up on time) with a total for the week. And he had only had 2 full morning schedules before we were together, and this transfer he only had 1 bad morning schedule, which is awesome! Then as for the Saturday night and Sunday they were very intense experiences/miracles. Which I don't want to rewrite about so I'll copy and post my email to President Porter for you.

This was a great week in which many cool things happened. 1) Joyce Frederick entered into the fold and joined the church! Such a sweet experience. :) Then there was the story with the Miamisburg sisters which I'm sure they told you all about but man was that a crazy experience. We were able to discuss it (Elder Holman and I) and saw all throughout the day how he was preparing us for that to happen. Even how he had us give our keys to the Elders and not allowing calls to go through to different sisters and a bunch of things that were so small but how they were preparing things for the night to happen. Then we met with the sisters and sister Nelson faught getting a blessing for a little while but knew she needed one. We annointed and blessed her (I annointed) and it was a very powerful blessing. Right before the blessing I had a very strong impression to pull Elder Holman into the Hall and let him know I felt she had spirits that need to leave, but also told him to listen to the spirit. But when he gave the blessing, 3x he cast out spirits and made some crazy promises, one of which was he promised Heavenly Father would send legions of angels to lift and bear her up and protect her. We finished giving the blessing and sat down, Sister Nelson was crying, but then I also noticed, she was drenched in sweat, it was intense and we were exhausted. Then Sister Tawzer asked me for a blessing which I feel was one of the most powerful blessings I have given as well, I have never really gotten super emotional with Gospel related things but when I was giving her the blessing I started to choke up and tear up, I felt so much love being expressed to her from God it was unreal. There was also a powerful warning I felt I should tell you, in the blessing he had me warn her to get help when she is starting to struggle and to reach out to those she can trust before she gets into a big hole. I felt that if she waited to long to get help it would be a real hard time for her to get out. Such an amazing experience, I'm so grateful our Heavenly Father allowed us to be tools in his hands.

Then that night was really tough. I started to allow fear to overcome my mind being afraid of the opposition. I was doing okay most of the night before bed. So after the blessing, while we were biking back, and talking about how we would probably face opposition, I had the feeling multiple times, Elder Holman was going to have a super bad night terror that night. While we were getting ready for bed (I hadn't told him what I felt) he said to me "Elder Silotti, if I'm having a night terror, the way to wake me up is to call me by my name, Alex, not Elder, I felt like I should tell you that". and let me tell you, when he is sleeping he is much stronger that normal. That's when the fear really set in and I had a rough time falling asleep. I was trying to pray and quote scriptures but nothing was working to overcome the fear I was feeling at the time. I finally fell asleep around 12:20ish. In the night, I woke up to Elder Holman rustling around and screaming/yelling (not sure what) in a very demonic and inhumane sounding voice and I started to scream his name in utter fear (my throat hurt after), after 3x of screaming his name, he finally woke and told me he had been awake the whole time and hadn't fallen asleep (which was not true). I was sweating and was terrified to move at all or do anything. I was so scared. I have never been so fearful and felt so alone and scared in my life. I asked Elder Holman if we could read the Book of Mormon and at first he said no, but a few minutes later he agreed. Once we started reading I started to calm down. After 1 chapter I was still fearful but calm enough to stop overheating and sleep. I woke up still very fearful. I didn't even want to get out of bed to turn on the light. I was scared to get in the shower or go in the living room it was very bad. I got in the shower and started to pray for help and was prompted to read the proclamation to the family and so I did. I immediately started to feel the fear leave me as I was reading through it, after I got on my knees and was thanking and begging God to keep helping me, that's when I was prompted to start reading off the other scripture in the shower. After my shower I felt good enough to realize reality. I had let so much fear overcome me, but was starting to overcome it with light. Through the rest of the morning there was still darkness but not as much. We got to the church and I went into the restroom and was praying to my Heavenly Father. And had such an amazing experience I started to tear up again as the atonement was applied as I opened my heart to God and repented for allowing fear to overcome my mind. God made a promise to me that when I took the sacrament the darkness would be gone completely and it was a real promise. I've always struggled with having much of an experience with the sacrament but this time when I took it the darkness left, I felt so clean and happy, so much so that I did not feel the need to receive a blessing anymore because of the cleansing power of the atonement as the spirit washed over me. I was so happy, but exhausted, I struggled to stay conscious the rest of church. All day I was worried that the fear would re-enter my mind as I recalled the past night and the fact that Elder Holman frequently has night terrors (I had to wake him up last night too but that one wasn't too bad) but I kept pushing away those thoughts and feelings of the night before, knowing if I was entertaining them, fear would again overcome me. I did not let Satan win and got through the day and night with no problems or fear and feel great today, and so happy at the growth of my testimony from that experience. Sorry my email was so long, but I felt I should let you know. Love you President!!!

Hope you have a great week Mom, love you!

This week has had it's ups and downs for sure. One super huge miracle though. One of the Sisters I'm over in the district took a couple medications that you aren't supposed to take together and she overdosed and was sent to the hospital. They sent her back saying there was nothing they could do. She was shaking non stop and couldn't really control her body at all. Everything was shaking. I didn't know it was this bad cuz the zone leaders made it seem like she was okay. Then President picked us up and took us over and we opened the door and she was curled up in a ball on the couch with every part of her body constantly twitching and shaking, etc.. Arms, head, feet, legs, etc.. All of it. It was kind of scary. She had been shaking like that for hours and was so exhausted she could barely even talk. She lost 7 pounds in like 8 hours. So we helped President Porter give her a blessing and then rushed off to go to Walgreens for medicine and came back, and they opened the door, and she was sitting up on the couch perfectly fine! It was insane! It was such a miracle. Definitely a testimony builder for sure. Anyways, have a great week, love you!