Hello

This last week was pretty awesome there was this less active kid that Elder Meisenheimer talked to in October he was almost 20 and when we met with him he was really nice but from then on was would just softly blow us off then last Friday we I invited him to church he said he couldn’t so I just asked him if there was a time this week that we could meet with him he said sure and we set a time for Thursday and when we met with him on Thursday Elder Armantrout and him really connected. We learned that he left the church when he was a senior in high school because he was going through some difficulties and felt like the church wasn’t helping and that no one understood what he was going through and about a year ago he moved to Kansas city and at that time he was super against the church saying that it wasn’t true and how it was evil. About the same time he moved here he went to a church with some of his friends and he met one of the pastors there and just felt super comfortable around him so he told him all the difficulties he was going through and the guy was able to help though them and helped him realize how much he needed God to help him overcome these challenges and it was there he understood the atonement. When we met with him this last week and really told him a lot of how the bible talks about the Book of Mormon and other stuff things were finally clicking and he told us that every time we would try to contact him he would be struggling and he was able to make the connection that this is what God wanted him to do so we invited him to read the Book of Mormon and we also invited him to come to our Christmas party and he was pretty excited for that and when he was there he started to make friends with some of the members there so that was pretty awesome and he was excited to come to church the next day and after the Christmas party we taught him the plan of salvation because he wanted to know more and we tough a really powerful lesson. It was almost two hours long and he was remembering thing he learned in the church in his youth and was getting really excited. On Sunday a little before church we got a call from him saying that he work up late and missed the bus and that he’ll try to make another one but we might need to pick him up. So it ended up that we needed top pick him up and we were going back to the church he told us that the night before his phone had 2 bars and when he woke up it was dead and that was why he woke up late and the other bus he tried to make came early and so he missed that one too and he was able to see that that could have been the devil trying to stop him and he also had a really good dream that answered some questions he had got him even more pumped up for church and when we got to church he was sooo excited he felt the spirit so strong and knew that this is what he needed to be and he made even more friends at church and this one member who kind of had the same story growing up went up to him and just told him how much this is going to change his life and how proud he was to see someone else doing the same thing he did. On the drive back to his house he texted his dad that he came back to church because his dad and him kind of had a falling out when he left the church and then lately he would talk to his dad but his dad would kind of avoid him. It was kind of funny but he told us that if his dad would start talking to him again he would be mad and our lesson in elder’s quorum about forgiveness and that really touched him. After he texted his dad, his dad texted back “that just made my year son” and then asked him if he could take him out for breakfast sometime this week which surprised him because his dad lives in Iowa and after his dad texted back saying I’m sorry that I haven’t been the best dad. All I did was just say a lot of prayers, I’m sorry. That touch him as well and the whole experience is one of the things why I just love being on a mission to help not only bless the lives of nonmembers but also members who need a little help. So that has been the highlight of the week and pretty high up there for my mission

Love Elder Birch