Thursday, May 6, 2010

"That's What Living Is To Me"

The area is growing great! This week finished with bang! The hand of the Lord and his divine blessings were truly seen at the end of this week! For the most part, however, the first half of the week was extremely difficult. Elder Schwab and I made a goal to get our 10 contacts everyday no matter what! Every day we contacted everyone and consecrated much more time than usual to do contacts. Not only did we not have our 10 contacts each day, but we had less contacts than last week! We had 3 days where we didn't even go in for lunch! We eat good though...usually we have been buying tuna cans from the grocery store, and been putting that on a baguette...BON APPETIT! But, along with our contacts, our lessons were all down too. Every new investigator we have been teaching we have been giving baptismal dates to, and if they aren't ready we haven't been fixing return appointments. But its great, because although we have had trouble finding new investigators, but those we do have are progressing towards baptism. Throughout my mission I have thought, oh well, if not ready for baptism maybe they will be ready after understanding the plan of salvation, or the gospel. But, the truth is that God knows who he wants in his church, and HE prepares them! Elder Schwab and I have been striving to be the missionaries outlined in "A Challenging and Testifying Missionary", a great talk by Alvin A Dyer which Tuck should really read if he can find it....haha... It was pretty discouraging as we got rejected over and over again. But at church we ended up having 2 investigators that we hadn't expected as well as 5 returning members!

One of our strongest returning members, JOSE, just received a call to be branch clerk, he was beaming all Sunday! Sunday afternoon we were again blessed by the Lord when we were able to teach one of our contacts from earlier in the week. We taught them the restoration and the whole family felt and understood the truthfulness of the message. Despite the fact that they were all Catholics, who tend to be stubborn when given a baptismal commitment, Elder Schwab gave a great testimony helped the Holy Ghost sink deeper into their hearts. They want to be baptized! They are now praying about a date for the 25th. The area is going great, Elder Schwab is a great companion. He is a stud and is going to do great things on his mission!

For more baptisms, we have to get some people to church. I don't know if I told you about Alain? He came to church and was welcomed very well by the priesthood. I really like this guy. He has been giving me some pointers on how to cook fish! This week Elder Schwab and I made some dope creole rice with fish! It was pretty good...



HAHAHA....that is so cool that Tucker bought Airborne! I love that movie! I will vouch for Tuck that he always loved it! " I thought you played hockey" "ON NINTENDO!" hahaha

Because Mother's Day is on Sunday and I'm a little further from the Collings, I'll probably just use our cell phone and call you when we get home from working for the day...we will go in about 2 hours earlier to give us each some time to call...but how about 7 o'clock my time? I'll buy a calling card here, and I'll call either the home phone or a cell phone...let me know which one I should call and I'll check my email real quick Thursday when we update our online area book.

YES! I got the package on Tuesday! Thanks so much! Loved the jerky! I had forgotten how dang good that stuff was!

Keep kicking butt! I know that this is the Lord's work that we are doing! This is the most purifying and edifying work we can do...and it's not just being a full-time missionary that I'm talking about. Parenting, teaching in church, serving others, being an example, and just being charitable are all things that help to advance the kingdom of GOD! So let us work hard, play hard, and love hard and see the blessings of God poured out on our heads!

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