2012 is here, bringing new opportunities and new room for growth. My consecrated year has ended, and it's weird to think that I'll be coming home this year, but lets not talk about that. This past week has been pretty great though. The weather here in NJ can be very strange. One day it's pretty cool and kinda nice, but another day there is piercingly cold wind. Hopefully the winter can go by faster than last year. At least we haven't had any snow recently. I was hoping to have some for Christmas, but now it's not a really big deal with the Holidays over. I'm sure we will get it soon enough though.
Passaic still doesn't have a ton of work as of now, but we are building bit by bit. I was pretty excited this week when we made contact with another former investigator named Amaya, who stopped meeting with the missionaries because she had a baby. But she kindly allowed us to return, and we had a great lesson with her. She wanted to know what it was to be a Mormon. She also had smart questions about why we have 12 apostles today if Jesus Christ had already called 12 apostles before to judge the 12 tribes of Israel. And she wondered why we had the Book of Mormon when the book of Revelations says that we shouldn't add or take away from the Bible. We still haven't gotten the opportunity to go back and teach her the answers to those questions, but we are excited to have her as an investigator.
Other great news received this week! Our mission had a baptismal goal for 400 baptisms as we finished the year. Sadly we ended with 397, but got 3 more on the first of January, so now we are at 400. But one miraculous experience has to do with one of the investigators I taught in Union City, and then in Passaic. Do you remember Hans? Well I guess a number of days ago, he sat down with the missionaries, and finally asked the missionaries when they were going to baptize him! Hans got baptized on Saturday! I was very glad to hear it, especially since he had been investigating for a good while, and had attended church tons of times, and even helped us with the flood clean-up. The other Passaic elders had a baptism this week for a lady named Marisabel who was a former. She is a super cool lady who received her answer of the truthfulness of the Gospel in a pretty miraculous way. It was very similar to Joseph Smith's experience involving a dream where Satan was holding her back as she was trying to get to the light or something like that. We had to go over to the baptism a little early to help the elders boil water to heat up the baptismal font water. It was a wee bit chilly. President and Sister Jeppson came to the baptism though, and the service was really great.
Jimena is doing pretty great as well. She came to church again, for the second week in a row! She is doing really great, and still keeps commitments. Hopefully we can continue to help her progress so she can be baptized on February 5, although we might try to move it up a week, in case I get transferred before her baptism.
We had some great visits with members, teaching them about setting spiritual new year's resolutions, and talking about how Heavenly Father can help us accomplish our goals through faith and humility. (See Ether 12:27). We had a pretty "Full" new year's eve as we visited some of the members, and received food from all 3 appointments.
Welp, it looks like the computers are running out and I might not have much time left. Today was a pretty great day thus far. We had to take the car in to get the alignment fixed in the trunk that was keeping it from shutting. It was pretty expensive to say the least. But today we had a great zone meeting, and Elder Erikson and I did a training about becoming master planners. President and Sister Jeppson even came to zone meeting today which added a little more pressure. They both said it was a really great meeting, and the counsel I received from President was that I need to smile more. Sounds like my mother huh?
I'm excited for this new week to see what kind of things we can get rolling. Thanks for your support and love. The gospel is true!
Love you all!
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