Labas!

For District Meeting last week, we talked about commitments and their role in bringing people to Christ. I had thought of an analogy earlier that I quite enjoy. The Gospel is like two poles of a ladder. We are at the bottom and getting to Heaven, is the top. Commitments form the rungs of the ladder. Without them, it is still possible to make it to Heaven, but incredibly difficult. Commitments ease the process and provide a smooth transition up the slope to Heaven. We also talked about giving commitments in all of our conversations, not just with lessons, but even people who aren't really interested, but stopped long enough to talk with us, which we implemented this week.

We had a lesson with a less active, Mykolas. He knows the truth of everything and enjoys meeting with us and learning more about the Gospel, but due to work can't come to Church. He used to be active, but since changing jobs, has greatly decreased his Church attendance. I don't really know how to help someone like that. It's not really an understanding issue, but just a reality/priority issue.

For English we taught about stores and food, including slang for money. We also asked if Maxima (basically the Lithuanian equivalent of Wal-Mart) was owned by the Mafia, since I have had people tell me that before, and figured it would be kinda fun. THe majority of our class, voted Yes it is.

We found a few lessons this week. One with a guy who was very interested and appreciated a lot of the things we had to say, but wasn't really looking to join a specific religion, more desiring to just practice by himself.

Also taught a woman, who had previously met with missionaries and had some great questions we could answer. She enjoyed looking for the commonalities in all Churches, because those must be true and we explianed, why it is that all kinds of churches have things in common, through the Apostasy. It's just awesome to be able to make connections and give people answers to questions they didn't think were answerable.

We then taught a young kid who was very open to our ideas, but didn't really feel a need to meet more and find out if it was true now, since he's young, he has his whole life to figure out the truth. But we gave a Book of Mormon and asked him to read it and if he felt it was true to call us, so hopefully that will work on him for the future.

A crazy circumstance, that testifies to me of God's hand in the work happened this weekend. The other Elders taught a kid, that just happened to be someone that Elder Cooke and I taught and then tried to have a return appointment with, but due to some confusion, we missed each other and then we lost track of him.

I guess that Elder Whicker and I look German or something, since people have asked us if we are German and greeted us in German. Also a man gave us the Nazi salute and then said 'Hail Hitler' to which we replied, no and then explained who we were.

Oh, some people in our English class told me that I look exactly like a cartoon character named Lucky Luke. They showed us a picture and the other Elders all agree. Could you perhaps delve a bit into what/who he is?

As always I love serving and living in Lithuania. I appreciate your prayers and thoughts and pray for you always. Good luck in school, try not to drown in your seemingly endless supply of homework.

Love,

Vyresnysis Conor Hilton