Week Six: Revamping the Blog

Sam recently reviewed the "Online Missionary Work" guidelines and came across the following:

"Please ask your parents and family not to repost your emails home and not to post pictures, confidential information, or details about people you are teaching in their online blogs or on their Facebook pages. In your emails and letters, do not share confidential information about your investigators."

Well. That puts a damper on this blog, doesn't it?! I was already editing his e-mails to remove sensitive information, but in an effort to help Sam be exactly obedient, I will no longer be posting his letters. Instead, I will summarize his weekly updates in my own words. Hopefully it's better than nothing. Sorry about that!!

Sam's Martin side of the family will appreciate his borrowed tag in this picture. :)

This week...

Sam is obviously being well fed. I'm not sure exactly how much he weighed when he left, but he's already gained somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 pounds. At this rate, he'll be growing out of his clothes pretty quick! Yikes! 

On the plus side, he's getting a nice tan. :)

Sam had a couple of difficult "dark" days. He asked his companion to give him a blessing which was "very inspired" and it chased away the darkness. (He's definitely experienced some personal opposition in the past couple of weeks. There must be great things just ahead!) 

Sam is now using an iPad mini which is a lot more portable. I'm sure that will open up a lot of options for teaching and sharing the gospel. :)

Sam and his companion had 5 less-active members and 4 investigators at church on Sunday! Wow!!! One of those at church was a new investigator they just found last week who is very excited about the gospel. 

And my personal favorite: Thank you, Mom, for teaching me how to clean. It's so satisfying. I cleaned while Elder M. slept last P-Day. :)

Love,

Elder Stowell