Family history is opening doors and hearts

Happy Memorial Day!

It has been a good week here in Vancouver. The Sun came out, along
with quite a few new investigators coming out of the woodwork.

Noteable investigators include Elizabeth - A woman in her mid 30
engaged to a member of our ward. Neither of them come to church very
often because he is on call 24/7, but he has a strong testimony and
has shared it enough with her that she has picked up a Book of Mormon
on her own initiative and has started trying to figure out her opinion
on the book. Tessa is another new investigator. We found her knocking
doors a few weeks ago. We went back this past week and she wondered
what took us so long haha. It also turns out her kids are friends with
the kids of like the most active family in our ward.

Other things this week - I had a really great exchange. We decided
that since the bishop and Stake President are so enthusiastic right
now about family history work that we would have to say the words
"family history" or "genealogy" in talking to every singles person we
talked to. The results were incredible. Way more people were willing
to talk to us and we even got more return appointments.

One man had been familiar with the church for almost three decades.
But offering to help him do family history we were the first
missionaries that actually got inside his house. We helped him set up
a familysearch.org account and connect him to his ancestors. He said
he never thought in his whole life that he would see as much of his
own family history as we found for him that day. He got really
emotional talking about his ancestors, it was cool.

This past week we also had 2 Samoan barbecues and were invited to a
third today. I may never eat again!

Also, we got transfer letters this past week and I will be headed to
Astoria on Wednesday. Newly assigned car: The minivan! Ha I'm so
stoked!

Love you all!

Elder Paul Thomas

pic above is of our bball game this morning.  Man in the middle and far left are members.  Guy and guy's daughter on the right were super drunk when we walked by last night (sunday).  He said I was the tallest man he had ever seen and because of that he had to challenge us to basketball ha.  We said we couldn't play because it was sunday but if he still wanted to play today (p-day) then we'd drive back and have a showdown.  Final score was 21-8 for us.

Breakfast with the Ravenbergs

The Brown Family