"Making Music for Money"

Well, this week I felt was a success. After being directed on how to work with our branch president, that's the first thing we did. We went to him and asked for his advice, letting him know that we will do all that his asks of us. I think that's important in showing him that we will do EVERYTHING that he asks...already the trust and unity between the branch and missionaries has increased. Our president left on vacation Thursday taking with him the questions about how many baptisms the Lord would want for Lamentin, and how many inactives he wanted to come to church. The one answer we had to know was with whom he wanted us to work. He commanded us to work with all the part-member and inactive families. We have started that and are excited to see the results of his priesthood power at work.

We have continued to work hard with the branch missionaries. We have been training them individually, creating lesson plans with them in a training process. They are learning and growing spiritually, and this week they had their first lesson without the missionaries! Elder Snow and I were so excited for that. We have a baptism coming up for this week, Judicael. He should have been baptized last week, but he is still having trouble with cigarettes; it is his only problem. He is at all church activities and is calling members on his own to pick him up for church. I know that the Lord is watching over this island and that he will bless us in reaching our goals if we as missionaries are responsible and accountable for the goals we set. In fact, that could be said for any righteous goal we set. Judicael should finally be baptized this next week. He really needs our prayers to stop smoking. We finally fixed a plan for him with our district president. Judicael has the desire, he wants to serve a mission and he wants to follow the path of Christ. We had a great lesson with him about that path, and how if he has not seriously repented and given up his sins he cannot be baptized. And the dangers of if we take up that path, the consequences of leaving it after the baptism. Nephi(2 Nephi 31), tells us that it would be better that we had not known Jesus than to quit this straight and narrow path. This gospel is the best, it is the perfect gospel, and there is no other way under heaven in which we can gain eternal life with our sweet families. Judicael is serious. We are seeing changes in him, and I am thankful for your sustaining prayers that help him. I'm gonna to let him know that you pray for him as well.

So, I'm not getting transferred; Elder Snow and I are still zone leaders. So that will be fun to be with him again. He is my boy. There was a talent show the other night for the district. He can sing pretty dang well, and I played "Everything" by MB....we stole the show! Actually, we didn't see many of the other performances because it started an hour and a half late, and so we had to take all the elders home after only a half hour. Our zone has not changed too much, they are sending over two other missionaries, making 16 here! I feel bad for the collings because they love to teach, but they never have time because they are ALWAYS doing office work...they feel bad, they so badly want to teach and change lives, but without them we would be up the creek. It's too bad too because they have such a great spirit about them; they are great teachers and every time they teach, you sense their sincere love of the gospel. Oh and to answer dad's question, they can speak pretty well. They did serve in France for two years, but they have the most horrible accents ever haha. We missionaries get a kick out of 'em.

Well I gotta go, but I love y'all and you have to give Spence a big "what's up" from me. Oh and congratulate Ben...he is a stud (cousin Ben Seagle made the "A" football team).