Week Six

(Letter March 5)

I'm sorry I haven't been very good at taking pictures this transfer. I will send you the mission picture though of all the missionaries in the mission. Where's Elder Hicks?

 

Can you believe how fast the time flies. Week six of the transfer is here, meaning that big changes could be here. Elder Wootton could be staying or going to a new area, and I guess the same is for me. I'll most likely be staying in Hightstown, possibly till the end of my mission. That's cool that you're coming to New York. I don't think my siblings would be able to come visit me anyway, I think it's against the rules, and that would probably blow my mind, so I think e-mails are fine.

This week has been a little tougher and at times i'm just not sure what this area needs. It's been about a year since the last recent convert was baptized, and a lot of the people we have found are slowly being sifted (aka, not really interested, not willing to commit to anything, lost contact, etc). Such has been the case this past week, and it was tough for us to find new investigators. By Sunday we hadn't found any, but the lord blessed us as we tried a former and started teaching Esperanza and Kathy, and then right after visiting our investigator Lily in a very intimidating situation of her parents, her cousin with her boyfriend, her daughter, and another cousin with a baby in the other room. It has always been hard for me to teach big groups of people, but I think as we really tried to be open, fun, and teach clearly and with power, the lesson went really well. We explained the restoration to them, gave them the Book of Mormon, and Lily's parents both seem to have some good potential. At the very end of the lesson when we invited them to be baptized if they knew the message was true, the mom asked what our belief was about Infant Baptism. We told her what we believed, and she completely agreed! It was a great Sunday that included 4 new investigators for us to work with. Who knows, maybe Lily, Her Parents, and Her cousin could be the Family we were looking for. It's not the average family because Lily is all grown up, and her parents live in another house, but they are still a family. We shall see how it goes.

Rosa is doing very well it seems. Unfortunately we only got to see her once this week giving her the restoration and the commitment to read in the Book of Mormon. She still has a date and is still desirous to learn, but her and Carlos aren't married. Luckily we were able to have a 2 on 1 conversation with Carlos last night telling him that Rosa couldn't be baptized until they were married. So she probably won't be baptized on the 25th of March, but hopefully we can help them get married soon so that Rosa can be baptized.

A lot of our other investigators aren't really going anywhere. We have a hard enough time seeing our investigators more than one time. We have a lot of people on a "do or die" circle on our white board at home that we are giving one more lesson to to see if there are any desires or if there is any potential.

   

The mission is focusing on the Book of Mormon this month which is pretty great! Part of our zone goal has been to use the Book of Mormon in every lesson, and I think it has really added power to our lessons, and invited the spirit a lot more. We have to give a district meeting tomorrow about how we can better read the Book of Mormon to receive revelation and strengthen our own testimonies. It could be Elder Woottons and my last district meeting together before transfers arrive. We are excited though, and this week should be pretty great.

Last week we had the opportunity to have a trio, as Elder Mortimer joined our companionship while his companion went to a leadership training in Morristown. He was with us for 2 and half days. It definitely shook things up a little bit, but 3 really is company and I think really takes away from your overall focus as a missionary. Elder Mortimer and I did do a tie trade (I think that was my first tie trade of the mission) and I got a really nice white and yellow paisly tie, my first paisly tie ever. When we were with Elder Mortimer, and got a chance to see more of the melting pot of new jersey as we taught a family from Liberia, and then a family from Haiti. There truly is so much culture here in New Jersey. The family from Liberia was pretty cool. They speak english, but the english they speak in liberia is a little different than we speak here, so it was pretty hard to understand her.

   

I really do love sacrament meeting each week when I get to play the prelude on the organ. I'm slowly learning how to do it, but it gets pretty hard trying to concentrate on my 2 feet and 2 hands at the same time, so sometimes I'll hold a note for a really long time while I figure out where I'm going, and then move onward with the song. I love the organ though. (Just a random fact)

  

Today we were able to have a pretty awesome zone activity including zone breakfast, a little game of basketball, and then some zone volleyball. It was fun to socialize and take a breather for a few hours, but now it's time to get back to preparing on p-day so that we can have a great week this week.

 

Thanks again for everything! I love you all and miss you all a lot, but time is flying by and there is still so much for me to learn. Until next week!