Second Exchange

Hey everyone!

First of all, I hope all of you are doing well. I know I might not say

it a lot in the general email, but I care about all of you and you're

all important to me. I really do feel the love back home, it's so

awesome!

This week.....let me just say, the spiritual experiences I receive

every week are so strong, I'm exhausted by the end of the night

because of them. It's always great looking back on the week, seeing

the Lord's hand everyday in all things.

So to start off, we did another exchange with the Camden Elders on

Tuesday. Elder Knuth came to Moorsetown while Elder Froc went to

Camden. Now, I'll be honest, at the start of the day I wasn't

motivated to really talk to people. Elder Hendricks and Elder Knuth

are probably two of the most talkative Elders in the mission, so I was

just feeling like I didn't need to talk as much. But I knew that was

the wrong thing to think so I prayed and asked Heavenly Father for

help to just be motivated to talk to people on the street or when we

were knocking on doors. After that, I just had the feeling to tell the

Elders what was on Sent from my iPad

The next day, Elder Froc came back to Moorsetown and we went right to

work. We taught 4 lessons that day, and the lesson that really stuck

out to me was a man who met with us named Roger. He was raised

Catholic but didn't believe in it. He was kind of skeptical about

Joseph Smith and wondered how he could have restored the church. It

was great to see his whole outlook on the church change as we taught

that God called a prophet again to bring back His gospel to the world.

He said he would definitely read and pray to know if the Book of

Mormon is true.

Thursday, after district meeting, a member took my companions and I to

a fancy Chinese Restaurant, where I had sushi for the first time. It's

so good! Apparently it's just what we needed because we went straight

to work, teaching and finding and we found a lot of success and

received 2 new investigators by the end of the night. But really, I'm

just glad Heavenly Father blessed us with all the good work we're

doing.

Friday we had another exchange where Elder Hendricks went to

Pennsauken (which is pretty much East Camden) while we got Elder

Fowers, who is another golden. It was great to just do the work with

Elder Fowers and the highlight of the night was seeing Brother Kpale.

Now, Brother Kpale is in his mid 30's and went on a mission to Africa

in Ghana. But he's less active and has not gone to church in over a

year. None of us have ever met Brother Kpale, only Elder Hendricks who

was gone. But the spirit was so strong when we were talking to him.

And it was so awesome just telling him Christ still loves him and that

he wants him to be happy. And that it'll bless him coming back to

church and renewing that baptismal covenant he made through the

sacrament. By the end of the lesson we both were just in tears and he

told us next week he would go to church, even if it meant losing his

job. It was something I can't even describe, I remember walking out

his house just thinking "what just happened" because the spirit just

took over. I just remember praying to God thanking for all he did for

me in that lesson, that I developed such a great love for a man who I

never knew. I definitely won't forget this anytime soon.

We also were blessed to have another baptism yesterday. This was

Amanda's friend Sara Davis, who is so cool. She's so great because she

has a 17 year son and she said she treats me like her son. Which I

thought was so nice. But it's so inspiring to see, she's a mom to 6

kids and she was a huge example to her kids and her husband. It was so

awesome being one of the two witnesses to the baptism and seeing all

the sweet young kids up front to the baptism.

It was just an awesome week all around. So much work was done and

there's still so much to do. It's Elder Hendricks last week, so we are

going to make the most of the time we have left of the transfer. Just

always remember as we put in our all to serve the Lord and have

continual faith in Him, He will bless us. I know it's a simple

principle, but I see it everyday. Always remember He loves you and

wants you to be happy.

Hope all is well,

Elder Cortes