Elder Jacob Merkley Report

hello yall,

this week was absolutely amazing! We blew our goals into space! plus, i got to shake the hand of an apostle of the Lord! it was a great week, one i will remember forever!

well, tcc is going just fine...we are teaching Lauren and she is progressing just perfect. we are still on schedule to baptize her the weekend before transfers...she is such a joy to serve! its so cool to see her make small changes to become better! she is now wanting to date our ward missionary leader! :) which we are cool with, because she is changing her mind about now wanting to marry in the church...plus, it gives us extra points with the missionary leader!

we are teaching Ishmael...he is still reading and praying...he told us that if he came to know that it was true, that he would be baptized...he is acting in faith! the only restraint he has is that he is...gay. and he knows the church's stand on the subject, but he told us that he knew that he could change if he got his answer...i guess we will get there when we get there...we want to make sure he knows its true, because then he will want to change...

we met a girl named Rachel this week. She is on lots of depressants, she has had a hard life, but Heavenly Father put us in her path right when she needed us...she is reading a praying about the Book of Mormon and is going to go far, i think. We are trying to help her seek learning by faith and not just spoon feed her.

We are teaching a girl by the name of Melissa, best friend to our relief society president, and she is great! she too is reading a praying and i really do believe that she will go far since she has a lot of connection with the church.

o last monday we went and played tennis with Krissi williams and some other members and some investigators! the sun was out...it was hot, but we played hard anyways! i had lots of fun and i liked tennis more than i thought i would and i think it is something that i will pursue after the mission...ryan and i will probably do it to keep us in shape. we also got Lauren to go to the ward's fhe and she loved it! she is getting so comfortable with the members...and I am getting very comfortable with not worrying! Its awesome!

tuesday thru wednesday we had a trade off! i went up to the FSU campus and was with my district leader...he is going home in 2 weeks, so he talked about home a lot...it was not fun in a sense because i didn't like listening to it, but also fun in another sense since i opened up and talked to him about my possible future plans after the mission. it was great! i love exchanges since its pretty much a sleep-over!

Thursday we helped Lauren move into a new apartment...once she decided to tell her mom that she was getting baptized, her mother kicked her out, so we volunteered to do service for her and help her move into the new place...It was great doing service for once, since we don't very much at all. We had an amazing lesson with Melissa about recognizing the spirit and what it felt like and the whole works...

Friday we had an amazing lesson with Lauren...she had a friend there and we talked about scripture study and praying often. the best part was that her friend agreed with everything we said. we are now meeting up with him this week. Lauren is in the Student Government and she talks about her baptism to everyone! we have had lots of opportunities to share the gospel with the SG members. WE also had the neat experience of having a conference call with President SUmmerhays and the entire mission. We all listened to his counsel for a little bit and then commenced a mission wide fast for Elder Bednar's training with us. that night, the Crawfordville elders came and slept over since they were the ones driving us to the conference.

Saturday we had to be up at 4:15am (that's 1:15 your time) because we had to drive 3 hours to Pensecola, Florida to be with Elder Bednar...ROAD TRIP!!!! it was lots of fun traveling! We got there and got to spend some time with all the missionaries! what a sight to see everyone there! i got to see all 9 of my mtc district...and also my original district...some of them were shocked since they hadn't heard that i was out again.

then we were trained by an apostle of the Lord. It was an amazing experience...in preparation for the training meeting, Elder Bednar had us study two talks, "seek learning by faith" and "pray in faith". We focused on the two with him...he was awesome! he was more laid back and funny than i thought he would be! there was one time that he was talking about not doing a certain thing once we got home from our missions and he said, "if i find out you do, i will hunt you down and do bad things to you." it was great to hear an apostle say that! The first thing he asked us to do was to not take any notes on what he said...he said that it didn't matter about him, if we got so preoccupied with writting down what he said, we wouldn't pay proper attention to what the Spirit was telling us to write down... He said that this meeting wasn't here to take notes, but to receive revelation. He made comments through the whole thing that were very comical!

ONe thing he said was, "teaching is not talking or telling. Teaching is observing, listening, and discerning to know what to say" (he told us to write that one down) All he really did was provide an atmosphere in which we participated and shared insights...he told us how he didn't want to simply ask questions and "nail" us so to speak, because then we would have become objects, not letting us act. The best part was that i had lots of questions answered, but not by him. The spirit was very strong! we also got to ask him any question we wanted! Sister Bednar was truely amazing as well!

WE then got to shake his hand! I SHOOK THE HAND OF AN APOSTLE! it most likely will never happen again...but it was amazing! that night after we drove back we took Lauren to a baptismal service...the perfect day!

so my week was truely amazing! i will always remember shaking elder Bednar's hand! we had a great week in reguards to our numbers! it was just grand...hard, but amazing!

love yall very much!

elder merkley

Nothing but Static Lately

Sorry for the lapse in Merkley news. A lot has happened the last few months and I'll try to get pictures and information up. Not sure who is reading this stuff anyway, but I'll pop up Jacob's mission letter and get more information up later.