Sister Emily Elise Shill

Continued from last week: Later that day we went by to see a friend of ours whom we are teaching to say hello and invite her to church. Once she answered the door and we talked, I thought it would be fun to play my harmonica for her. As we walked away from her apartment, her downstairs neighbor popped his head out and said, "Was that you playing the harmonica?" He introduced himself as Samuel. He's from Mesa, AZ so we talked quite a bit about that. We shared family history with him too. Unfortunately, he said that his son does it for the family, and didn't seem too interested. But we plan to just keep saying hi as we teach his neighbor. This week: Today (April 18th) we had the highly anticipated, first of it's kind, "Norwegian Barbecue" in celebration of 36 baptisms in March! (John was one of those baptisms!) I got on a bus this morning at 7:15 and drove with all the other Denver Metro missionaries back to the G Road building in Grand Junction. Our entir...

  A few weeks ago, our good friend John got baptized. John had a very unique journey coming to the church. He'd been coming to church for a year, chosen to start living the word of wisdom, the law of the fast, and was paying tithing, but he refused to pray and did not believe that God loved him. However, with the support of our wonderful ward members, his testimony grew a ton during the 3 weeks we worked with him to prepare him for baptism. He went from having some nervousness regarding his baptism, to being comfortable with the idea, to "looking forward to it", to being "excited". At the beginning, John felt that baptism was just a way for him to no longer be "a guest." But he said that as he prepared for baptism, it started to be more meaningful to him. We had lessons over the phone every single night until he was baptized, and John began to pray and read the Book of Mormon consistently. When he was baptized, he brought his boss/roommate Don who real...