Down to the Wire

(Letter May 22)

Things are going quite well here in New Jersey. The weather has been pretty beautiful (not too hot nor too cold), and time continues to drift on at racing speeds. I can't believe it's already Monday again. I have a feeling these last 3 months of my mission aren't going to go much slower. Really the only way to make time go slower on the mission is to stop working hard, and why would I want to do something like that. When you work hard, time seems to fly. This week Elder Jellen and I worked really hard to acheive our goals, and for the first time since we've been together, we hit the lesson standard of 20 for the week! I know that may not be a lot, but we were pretty happy just to be teaching.

    

Our investigators are doing really well. We've been able to teach Felipe twice. We saw him last monday, explained our purpose a little more, taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and then we set him with a baptismal date for June 3rd. He said he would do it, and on Thursday Elder Jellen and I made a baptismal calendar for him outlining everything that would need to take place for him to be able to get baptized on the 3rd. He seemed willing to follow it. We taught him one more time, invited him to read and pray about the Book of Mormon, and yesterday Elder Jellen said that Felipe felt really good about the Book of Mormon. Yeehaw! He came to church again yesterday, and we are going to see him tonight at dinner at a member's house. Yay for member work!

   

Ana... Well we actually didn't get the chance to see Ana this week. She cancelled the appointment we had set with her, and she is apparently going through a lot right now and for some reason isn't up to meeting with us until things are figured out? (I add the question mark, because I'm not really sure whats going on with her...)

   

On Tuesday I was able to go on an exchange with Elder Turnbow, one of our zone leaders. We were able to visit with a kid named Derek who goes on his mission to France in 2 months, and give him some pointers of what to expect. Later that night we had one of the funniest dinner appointments of my life. We went to see a member, and her inactive antichurch son was there, and he spent like an hour telling us stories about the crazy people he meets at work. (he works at home depot). Elder Turnbow and I were laughing so hard. It made for some good endorphins.

  

Miracle of the Sabbath goes to Victor! Victor came to church today, which was quite incredible. This whole time I thought the only reason he could never come to church was because of work. This is the guy that we talked to about drinking coffee. Well we taught him a lesson, one question led to another for us to discover that Victor's belief in God has wavered because of science shows he's been watching on the Discovery channel. At least we have a good place to start with him. (He's a member, but has been less-active for quite some time.)

   Yesterday Elder Jellen and I stuck around for a baptismal service for the Princeton English Elders. They baptized a 15 year old named Melvin, who actually has a pretty incredible converstion story. So get this... About a month or so ago, Melvin (at that time an Atheist) was looking up religions on Wikipedia. He found Mormonism, and said it was the one that made the most sense. That led him to mormon.org, and LDS.org where he watched the Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration video. He referred himself to the missionaries in Princeton, and after a quick 2 and a half weeks of teaching, was baptized. What a miracle right? And from what I've heard about him, he's got the doctrine down really well. Just think Atheist to Mormon in just a small span of time.

 

So that's about the jest of the week. This week will probably fly by as we have a zone conference with Elder Kevin R. Duncan (of the Seventy) and Fausta's temple trip on Saturday! This make for a pretty good story. So when Elder Ferrel and I got dropped from being zone leaders, we both got transferred into eachother's old areas. Him in Dover, and Me in Hightstown. He told me that he had a recent convert here that I needed to prepare to go to the temple, and I in turn told him that I had a recent convert there that he needed to help prepare to go to the temple. Throughout these few transfers we have kept eachother updated on the progress of eachother's recent converts, and now, both our recent converts are going to the temple on the same day, same session. Coincidence? (That is, if all goes well with Fausta's interview this week). So we already have it planned out on Driving up to west New York, sleeping there Friday night, and heading over to the temple early Saturday morning. My first Spanish Temple Session.... Should be interesting. But I'm so excited! Elder High called me last week and told me that Hector (from Union City) is finishing up his temple classes as well, and should be headed to the temple pretty soon.

 

These are the last 2 weeks of the transfer, and then I'm down to the wire. I've gotta make the most of it. Work Hard, Have Fun, and make it the best 2 years!

 

I love you all so much! The Gospel is True!