A.J.

I hope you all had a great week!  This week was a pretty normal week, so this email will be short and sweet:)  

We had the chance to teach A.J. again, but unfortunately not Rudh.  A.J. expressed that she had a lot of concerns and the opposition she has been facing from her family and friends since she started taking the lessons and going to church.  She asked us why all this was happening when she is doing what she feels is right.  Sista Jeppson bore a powerful testimony of the power of God and that when the devil sees we are trying to become better, he hits hard.  He doesn't want us to be happy, he wants us to be miserable just like him.  We then read Joseph Smith History:

"I soon found … that my telling the story had excited a great deal of prejudice against me among professors of religion, and was the cause of great persecution, which continued to increase; and though I was an obscure boy, only between fourteen and fifteen years of age, and my circumstances in life such as to make a boy of no consequence in the world, yet men of high standing would take notice sufficient to excite the public mind against me, and create a bitter persecution; and this was common among all the sects—all united to persecute me.

It caused me serious reflection then, and often has since, how very strange it was that an obscure boy, of a little over fourteen years of age, and one, too, who was doomed to the necessity of obtaining a scanty maintenance by his daily labor, should be thought a character of sufficient importance to attract the attention of the great ones of the most popular sects of the day, and in a manner to create in them a spirit of the most bitter persecution and reviling. But strange or not, so it was, and it was often the cause of great sorrow to myself.

However, it was nevertheless a fact that I had beheld a vision. I have thought since, that I felt much like Paul, when he made his defense before King Agrippa, and related the account of the vision he had when he saw a light, and heard a voice; but still there were but few who believed him; some said he was dishonest, others said he was mad; and he was ridiculed and reviled. But all this did not destroy the reality of his vision. He had seen a vision, he knew he had, and all the persecution under heaven could not make it otherwise; and though they should persecute him unto death, yet he knew, and would know to his latest breath, that he had both seen a light and heard a voice speaking unto him, and all the world could not make him think or believe otherwise.

I had seen a vision; I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it, neither dared I do it."

It was a powerful lesson and we continue to work and pray for her.  She has the potential to do so much good!

Well, that's it!  We did a lot of contacting and found a few new people and will continue to do so!  My time is up! Love you all.