District Leader

Has it cooled off much for you?

• Yea, quite a bit.  it's been dropping down into the 40/50's.  it's been a little chilly.

 

How is [sister investigator]?

• Good

 

Is she going to get baptized?

• yea,  she is going to get baptized this next Saturday.  She is doing really good.  We had a Halloween party at the church and she came with her daughter and husband, and what surprised me more is that she brought food to the activity,  which means that she is already actively participating in the church even though she is still an investigator.  Which gives me high hopes for her staying active in the church, because she isn't going to sit around and wait for fate to decide her salvation, but instead, she'll get in there and actively look for it.

 

 How is your investigator pool going?  Has it grown at all this past week?

• poco a poco.  It hasn't really grown that much.  But I'm hoping to change that.  I have some changes that I'm going to do for finding, so we'll see what comes of it.  The plan is to visit/seek referrals from members a lot more, do service, and look in the area book, and to do very little door knocking.  The reason for that is because knocking doors is not very effective,  but hopefully through those other things we'll be able to find some new investigators.

 

So tomorrow are transfers, and elder Walker is being tranfered, and I'm training this transfer, and I'm also going to be district leader.  I'm a little nervous about that, mostly about training,  because the way I train him will have a pretty big impact on how he turns out as a missionary, so I don't want to mess up.

 

I told you about the Halloween party that the ward put on.  It turned out really good.  They had a bunch of games for the kids, and then did a trunk or treat.  There were a lot of nonmbembers there.  We spent the whole first hour and fifteen minutes talking to the nonmember friends that people had brought to the activity, and then they did the trunk or treat, so that was a little difficult to talk to them then.  but we got to visit with them,  we just need to follow up with some of the members to try and teach them again.

Birthday Doodle by Jeff

This is a doodle that Jeff sent me on my birthday card.

Doodle by Jeff

Picture from Zone Conference

Are the Fall colors nice?

• yep,  I'll try to remember to take some pix.

 

 How is [investigator] coming along? 

• Pretty good, her baptism was planned for this weekend, but I don't think it is going to happen.  We went over the interview questions with her and she passed with flying colors, she is just a little bit afraid to make the commitment.  She knows its what she needs to do, and that she is going to do it,  I think she is just a little nervous about making the commitment.  We were working hard to get her ready for this Saturday, but she just kept saying that maybe she would get baptized this Saturday.  We were thinking of talking to her Sunday morning and telling her that she needs to decide si o no, but we decided that maybe it would be best to slow it down a little bit, and that maybe she has a doubt that would be best resolved before her baptism.  So we called it off for this Saturday, and were going to talk to her about it.

 

Any new promising investigators?

• As of yet,not really.  We've been struggling a little bit to find recently.  there's a few potentials, but were hoping that we can turn a few into progressing investigators,  because pretty soon margarita is going to get baptized and then we'll be left with nothing if we don't find somebody soon.  However, even though we are struggling to find, somehow we taught an amazingly high number of lessons this week as compared with other weeks,  I'm still not sure how that worked out.

 

I'm trying to think of what to write about this week, but I'm not coming up with too much.  On wednsday I went on exchanges with the English missionaries. It's kind of a different exchange, because we live in the same apartment as them, and we have the same area as them, they just do english work and we do spanish work.  so it was an exchange, but the only difference was that I did english work for a day.

Mission Conference

How are you? 

 

Good.

 

How was the temple?

 

Great, we went with one of the members, and it was a great experience.  it always is.  then the member took us to a Chinese buffet, and then we went back home and rested/cleaned the apartment (our preparation day was on the day of the temple.)

 

How is the weather there?

 

pretty good.  It's starting to turn into fall.  There are some really hot days and other days that are a little chillier.  But the leaves are starting to change colors.

 

So, an update on [sister investigator].  I don't remember what I told you about her before, but she had told us before that she wanted to wait until December to be baptized.  But this week she came to a baptism (the zone leaders had a baptism).  and at the end of the baptism, one of our zone leaders said to her (keeping in mind that he doesn't speak Spanish so it was kind of a Spanglish conversation).  but he said thanks for coming and asked her "so this is going to be you in December, right?"  and then she responded saying "yes...maybe antes".   So she might get baptized sooner,  but there's a lot of pressure going on from her family/friends/husband.  But either way, she has a lot of faith, and I'm confident that sooner or later she will get baptized.

 

this Sunday was stake conference.  It was a really good stake conference.  elder Johnson from the quorum of the 70 came and spoke.   However we were a little disappointed that none of our investigators showed up.  Margarita wanted to come, but that just didn't work out.

 

so, I'm writing you today, on tuesday, because yesterday was the mission tour.   elder Jensen from the 70 came and spoke to us.  It was a really good meeting, and he really brought the spirit strong.  He taught us about faith.  It seems like every time I feel like I've learned everything about faith, and I learn more.  There is no end to learning about what faith is.

Baptism!

Things are going pretty well for me. 

 

We have several people that we are teaching right now.  We are teaching someone named [sister investigator].  She is a member referral, and She is progressing quite well.  She came to general conference this weekend, and i think she liked it.  We didn't have much time to ask her about it, but I think she liked it.  We had a lesson with her recently and she's starting to recognize a little bit more the promptings from the holy ghost, she told us that when she reads the book of Mormon it becomes really exciting for her and that she wants to read more.  We also set a baptismal date with her. 

 

We also found a family just when I got here.  They're still pretty new investigators, but [mother] has already read the Book of Mormon and told us how she felt relaxed while she was reading in the Book of Mormon.  That is such a huge miracle, I think that is a huge struggle for most people is to first of all read in the Book of Mormon, and then to recognize when the spirit tells them that it's true.

 

So, General conference.  There were a lot of talks that I liked from it.  There were some good talks in the priesthood session.  I love how bold Jeffrey R. Holland is.  There was also a talk that someone gave in the priesthood session, I don't know who it was, he is an x-mission pres. but he talked about missionary work. 

 

So, I'm getting this letter sent off a little bit later than normal, because this morning we went and played basketball with some members.  the church building is literally about a block away from our apartment.

 

So my time was about to run out, so I wanted to hurry and get the letter sent off before I got kicked off, but my companion is still writing his letter, so I signed back on.

 

So kind of a funny story.  we watched conference at the church.  But something wasn't working right with the electronics, and they couldn't at first get the spanish translation going, and we had an investigator there.  So I got the translation equipment ready, because I thought that I was going to have to translate (which wouldn't have gone too well, because, I tried to translate a few things in my head from conference, and their vocabe and grammer is really good, and it would be hard to keep up with)  But just as I got that set up, they changed it to spanish.  However there were about four other missionaries there, and a member that don't know one bit of spanish, so for about two of the talks they all just had to watch and wonder what was going on.  Then they finally got the english back on, but we had to listen with the headphones, so I just listened in spanish.  but I had to second guess myself when I heard that they were going to turn the tabernacle into a temple, I wondered for a minute if I understood it wrong.

 

Baptism of person Jeff taught before he was transferred