The importance of the Book of Mormon in the gospel

Hola Familia, This has been a challenging week with everything. I have had some pretty bad stomach problems and diarriah for most of the week. Starting last Monday I started having stomach pains, and I had to start eating a bland diet. After a couple of days it still wasn’t getting any better, and so finally I had to call President Callan and ask him what to do. On Saturday I finally went to the pharmacy and bought some pills to help out the problem that I was having. I started taking them, and now I feel a lot better, but it made for a long week with stomach pains the majority of it. On Tuesday in the district meeting, we talked about the importance of the Book of Mormon. It talks about Christ, it supports the Bible, it’s the keystone to our testimony and our doctrine, and it responds to questions of the Alma that people have. It actually helped me preparing and teaching about it to realize that I really do need to put more importance on it. We did some practices of using the Book of Mormon to testify of Jesus Christ. After the meeting (still with stomach pains) I did divisions with one of the companionships, and went to their area in Libertad. The first guy we taught was an agnostic (believes in God, but not in Christ) and he was talking about Hitler and a bunch of other weird things. I finally got on topic, and asked him about the Book of Mormon, and he said he had read it all the way through. I talked to him about it, and it just so happened, that I used our practice in the District meeting, and used the Book of Mormon to testify of Jesus Christ. He has been being taught by the missionaries for like 12 years, and they have a hard time getting him to do compromises. I testified to him of the book of Mormon, and used a quote from Jeffrey R. Holland, that no bad man could write a book such as this, and no good man would do it, unless it were true. After that he got quite and listened better. I shared with him my experiences of how I know that the church is true, and he said he had prayed three times with missionaries and didn’t receive a response. I asked him if I could invite him to do something, and he said yes. I invited him to read the Book of Mormon every day, and pray every day if it is true, and promised him if he did it he would receive a response before finishing the book. He accepted the invitation, and said he wants to try it out. After the lesson, the elder (in his 2nd change) was really surprised. Even though he didn’t really understand what we were saying, he saw that the guy just completely changed and listened. It was a really spiritual experience. Honestly, I didn’t know what was coming out at times; it was just what the spirit directed. It was really awesome to see that when the spirit directs a lesson, that it changes the people. At the end of divisions I did the evaluation, and went back to my area on Wednesday. The rest of the week was a challenge for me, because with my stomach, I wanted to just stay inside and sleep, but regardless, I kept going out and working. On Thursday, I got even worse, with headache, body ache, and the stomach ache. I barely made it through the day, but then the next day I felt a little bit better. In church we had 4 investigators again. One of them was Christian (15), who is going to be baptized this week. We already went over the interview questions with him, and he is really excited to be baptized. His mom and sister aren’t quite ready to, but we are going to keep working with them. For now, Christian has the support of the other young men, and the young men president in the branch. We set goals as a district to increase our new investigators, and the invitations to be baptized, and in the week we increased them both as a district by 12. Overall it has been a good week, I’m glad to be back to good health again, and now I can get back to working normal. I love you guys tons, and hope everything is going well. Talk to you next week. Elder Griffin