Letter #46 02/10/14

Hello everyone! This week has been kind of a roller coaster. Most of it was really great. We had an awesome lesson with Hudson Monday night, teaching him the Plan of Salvation. Having time to role play a lot, with appointments falling through, we were able to really simplify it for his level of understanding and so he was able to even explain it to us after. We invited him to be baptized and he accepted, but his dad said that he has to come to church 4 weeks in a row before he can. We know that if he does that, it will increase his commitment level . We also found out in the middle of the week that another investigator, Brenda, had talked to the bishop about setting a baptismal date because she wants us to be there. We were stoked! and so we tried setting up a time to go over the preparations with her. Thursday, I attended a special Leadership Council where we had in addition to the normal crowd: Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders, the District Leaders were invited and we had Brother Hemingway, Director of the Proselyting Services for the Church and Brother Woodruff, Director of Missionary Services for the Church. It was great to receive training from them and understand how to be more effective and successful. They shared some statistics with us. Since the missionary age has changed in October of 2012, there are now 405 missions, 84,533 missionaries serving, of which 55,396 are elders and 22,667 are sisters. Cool fact for sisters...before the age changed, there were only around 7,000 sisters serving! We've more than tripled!!! They had also done a survey asking people around the country (not of our faith), if they would consider joining the LDS church...9 million said that they WOULD! That is incredible. And Brother Hemingway said there's about 14,000 within our mission boundaries. So...Heavenly Father is definitely preparing people's hearts, and we have got to find them! We learned how to plan better and I can see how this will be effective in our work as well as after the mission. Saturday, we had a neat experience to attend a Family History fair at one of the Stake Centers to teach both adults and youth more about family history work. There were about 230 adults and around 350 youth! We watched a broadcast of John Bytheway and Neil L. Anderson (of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles). Pretty neat experience! Yesterday, at church was where it got a little disheartening. A positive, is that Sister Maness and I got to perform a musical number in Sacrament meeting. She sang "I Know That My Redeemer Lives"(efy version) as I accompanied her. I am so grateful I have a companion that I can share my talents with. She has an incredible voice and it really touched a lot of people in the congregation. We had a couple friends of some members come and so it was cool for them to see that too. However, Hudson did not come (which will push back his baptism) as well as Brenda. She was sick, but she hadn't been able to commit a time to meet to go over baptismal questions. Just when it seems like people are progressing really well, it seems like something always comes up. I understand that there are things not in my control, but it's hard when you have something that is so good and you're able to share it with people, they enjoy it, but they don't embrace it. I keep praying every day though for these individuals, and know that it will all work out eventually. The weather has been a bit extreme, full days of heavy snow fall. I've been able to work on my shoveling skills, but I'm starting to look forward to the summer again...haha. I love you all. I hope everyone will be with their loved ones this Friday (Valentine's day). I appreciate your love. I am so grateful to be out here serving and know that this is where I need to be. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is here on the Earth. Truth and purpose and hope is available to all who are ready to receive it.