Good Morning Ventura!!!

Hey everyone!!

Coming to you all live from beautiful, warm and sunny Ventura, California! I gotta say I do not envy your weather in the slightest. It has been nothing but drop dead gorgeous all week. Just more proof that I'm in the best mission ever.

Anyway, we've had a good week this week! It didn't start off so bueno though. Literally an hour after I emailed you all last week, Elder Collard and I got a call from one of our most promising potentials telling us that she no longer wanted to meet with us. Boooo!! And then the woman that I mentioned last time did the same. I was really bummed. It just really hurt to see this person who was so close to coming to the truth, and then she just turned around and walked away. But hey, its one of the fruits of missionary work :) But it could only be up from there! We went and visited with one of our investigators, Domiko. He's this really awesome guy, and we went in to check and see how his Book of Mormon reading was coming. He admitted that he hadn't really read at all, but he said he did some research on it and was wondering why so many people said it wasn't true. We had a really good discussion with him about how there must always be opposition to the truth. We promised him that if he read and prayed, that he would come to know that it was true, and he was very struck by that. He thought it was awesome that we could promise him that. We've got another appointment with him on Thursday, and I'm praying that he's been reading!
We also went and visited with another investigator named Melissa. It was a really off the cuff, just in the area sort of visit. But we ended up staying for about 40 minutes and gave a really awesome lesson on the importance of faith and baptism, and on Saturday we're going to be giving her a tour of the church building! I'm pretty stoked about that :)
But now I need to tell you about the most interesting visit with the most....let's say interesting person. So yesterday in church, Elder Collard was giving the lesson in gospel principles, and a member and her friend walked into class. That normally wouldn't be a problem, except that the friend kept asking really off topic questions. So we invited her to meet with us and the ward mission leader, and she accepted. So we went and found a class and sat down with her. That's when it started. To put it nicely, she's not as mentally sound as other people are. She kept asking really random questions, my personal favorites being:

"Why does your church think it's okay to use the government to control people's minds?"
"Why does your church think it's okay to do certain things?"
Such as?
"Murder."

She also claimed that Brother Long (our ward mission leader) was possessed. She compared to a slithering snake. So yeah.
Haha anyway that's pretty much all the excitement from me this week! Before I go I just want to share a quick spiritual thought.
So ever since I've left, I have gained a new view of my Savior and His Atonement. Before, I saw the Atonement as something that you used when you screwed up, and had punishments sort of affixed to sins. But now I realize that was a very skewed view of it. The Atonement is something we can use everyday. It's how we can find comfort and strength. Our Savior knows exactly how we feel, and he wants us to accept Him so that we can return to our Heavenly Father. The Atonement isn't just for sins. It's for everything. And when we do mess up, we can humble ourselves so that we can become better and be forgiven. It's not about punishment, it's about growth.

I love hearing from all of you!! And I'm glad that you're all doing so well! Good luck with everything this week and remember that the Lord loves you :)

Much love,
Elder Rosenlof