Teenage Hoodlums

Hey everyone! Elder Horsley here back to report on another week! And I'm sending this one early in the day instead of with 5 minutes left to write emails, so this one may blow all of my other emails out of the water! Or maybe not it still probably won't be very long. It feels like my emails get shorter and shorter every week. NEWS: - On Monday we knocked on the door of someone who we thought was a member, but it turns out she definitely was NOT. It was like 7:50 PM and she looked out the door and yelled "GET OFF MY PORCH OR I'M CALLING THE COPS". So I got to check that one off of my bucket list. - On Wednesday we had a super awesome lesson with one of our friends named Denise, and the Spirit was so strong! She has had a hard time building up the courage to come to church, but during the lesson she said "wow I should start coming to church". I was like "YES", so at the end I invited her to church. She said maybe and then I testified of the blessings of church and invited her again. I was like "this is going to be awesome", and then it was not 😂. She stood up and walked out of the lesson and drove away, and I felt SO BAD! But she texted us the next day and said "sorry I still want to meet" so CRISIS AVERTED! PRAYERS WORK! - On Thursday we went to meet with someone who I knew but hadn't talked to in a while. We had invited him to meet up and he said he'd love to, so we met up at a restaurant. I started trying to talk about religion with him and he stopped me and said "sorry son but I came here to socialize, NOT to talk about religion". So that was a weird lesson 😂. - On Friday we had an awesome experience. We have some friends named Dee and Lynell who we hadn't been in contact with for a while, but they're awesome. We've been wanting to see them again, but it's been hard to make contact. We were biking home for dinner one night, and I had a little prompting to go to their house. I told Elder Ames and he was like "alright let's go". We zoomed over there and had an amazing lesson with them! They were in a super rough situation with some financial problems, but we were able to share a message with them about the Book of Mormon and how it brings us peace. They were so grateful to see us, and as we left Dee told me "thank you for not giving up on us". God needed us there that night, and I'm so grateful for His guidance and the influence of the Holy Ghost that pushed us there that night. - We also met a super cool new friend this week named Monica! She's kind of crazy, but she's super funny and we love talking to her. We invited her to watch the baptism of another person who was being taught by other Elders, and she loved it! Sadly, she slept through church so she couldn't come (amateur move Monica), but we're praying to get her there next week! - Klaus came to church! And we had an awesome lesson with him! We talked about baptism with him and he said he'd pray about it, so please, keep him in your prayers! I've been reading the Old Testament in my quest to read all the standard works, and it's the last one I have on my list. It's pretty rough sometimes, but I have been loving it! I think I found my very favorite scripture in the Old Testament this last week. It's Deuteronomy 18:13 = Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God. I love how it clarifies that we may be perfect WITH Jesus Christ, not of our own merit. We are asked to walk the path of life and the gospel, and oftentimes we think that we do that by walking towards Christ, rather than WITH Him. We make the mistake of thinking that He is so far away, and beckoning us towards Him. However, while He always beckoning us home, he is in no way far from us. Christ walks our path road alongside us, giving us advice and helping us to be better. Because of His Atonement, He has already been down every road we will walk, and because of His love He has come back so He can show us the way. He helps us to be the very best we can be, and through His grace we can be perfect. I'm so grateful for the knowledge that He does not only love all of us, but He loves each of us. You are of infinite worth in His eyes. Don't you ever forget it. I love you all so much! Thank you for all your emails! I may not always have time to reply to them all, but I read each and every one and it makes me so happy to hear from you all! I hope you have the best week ever! - Elder Horsley 1) I am so artsy 2) Saying goodbye to Elder Noble