January 25, 2011 Email

Hey guys!

I'm doing pretty fantastic. The work is progressing and it isn't going to stop. Things are still on with Mason and Salena's baptism this weekend. It's going to be crazy cool. So Salena is pretty awesome. She is always embarrassed and shy when we come over and she just giggles a lot and it's hard for her to soak in what we're teaching. But she has such a desire to get baptized; it's amazing. We are going over every day this week to help her understand all she can before she's baptized. Not to just shove information at her, but to help her understand the covenant she wants to make so badly. It is a bummer that Christian's baptism got pushed back, but you're right, at least he's getting baptized, and it's gonna be so much more memorable for him to wait and have his cousin baptize him rather than just having one of the missionaries do it. I feel lucky he asked me to confirm him though. It's cool! We have met a couple of new people. We met a couple named the Dupree's and they are from the South-Mississippi. They're golden and ridiculously solid; they just haven't seen it yet themselves. Crazy! We also added a sister named Melinda who is Less-Active (so we thought) and were teaching before, but they cannot find her records no matter what they try looking it up under. So the process now is to find 2 witnesses that were at her baptism that are still alive and remember, or re-baptize her. So now we're teaching her. It's cool! The Lord keeps providing miracles for us!

Transfers are tomorrow. We just found out the information about it today. I'm staying in the area and Elder Orme is leaving, so I'm getting a new companion. (Hopefully one that won't lose his driving privileges within the first week of being here). That is assuming that they will have driving privileges to begin with. Keep your fingers crossed!

I don't think we are the only mission with the black box in the cars to monitor the missionaries driving, but we are definitely one of the few--for now. Word on the street is that the church will be implementing it into ALL the missions. Not exactly the direction I was hoping for, but I can't drive regardless, so ya.

We sure do get to speak a lot in Church! We did it again this last week! I took 25 minutes because of this cool thing Elder Orme was planning on doing. That's love for your companion; not everyone will take up that much of your companion's time for any reason. But I thought it was a good/powerful example. Standing there silent for 3 minutes looking into the audience (that's intense) then finally talking about how much anxiety is in the air. Then refer to how many people there are that have been anxious to hear the gospel their whole lives, but don't know where to find it. Then he added more, but normally you'd just say "...in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen."

So yesterday, as with all Mondays here in Tooele, the Library and Family History Library are closed. So until we can get something figured out, we just e-mail on Tuesdays.

Elder Reta is from Red Mountain. I didn't know him before the mission, but he lives over by McKellips and Greenfield (if I remember the street names correctly) over by the WalMart Super Center and stuff.

I love being a District Leader! It's changed a lot in the last couple months of how important and how much responsibility DLs have. So it's crazy how much there is and how inadequate I've felt at times, but I love being able to have this opportunity to grow and help others in the district to grow, too.

I'm getting kicked off.

Love u. bye.