June 22, 2009

June 22


Mom and Dad-

That’s really good news that Chad passed his exam. That has to feel so good to have that out of the way. Brett has been dating Jamie Linford? That is pretty random. Happy late Fathers day Dad!! Sounds like it was a good one. I miss those kids. So it seems like you guys are putting some pretty serious thought into St George, when would that all happen if you did decide to go up there? That business college in Salt Lake seems pretty cool. Ill definitely put some thought into that.

We just got transfer information in today. Elder Gooch is leaving to go be a Zone Leader up in Alabama. I am staying here and will be a trainer and district leader. The trainer part will be pretty fun I think, but im not so sure about the district leader part, but we will see how it goes. Im going to miss Elder Gooch a lot. It has been the best 3 tranfers of my whole mission. But I am really glad to be staying here. At the end of this transfer I will have almost been here in Fort Wiggity for 8 months!

The weather out here has reached unbearable. Today it is 98 degrees and that’s not including the heat index which usually shoots it up 10 degrees. Its pretty cool though, when we come back in from working all day, you can ring the sweat out of your garments. It hasn’t rained in a about a week, which is really unusual.

This week was good, but we had a really hard time finding new investigators. We tracted a bunch, but really didn’t have to much success in that, so we will just keep trying this week. Hopefully me and the new missionary will get off to a good start so that the work will continue to increase here. The one thing that was actually really good this week is that 7 investigators just randomly showed up to church yesterday. Usually we only get 2 or 3, so that was really surprising. Oh yeah, another pretty cool thing happened; we set a baptismal date with an investigator of ours named Alisha Striblan. We have been teaching her for about a month now at a member’s house and she is really solid. Our appointment this last Tuesday went really well. She said that she hadn’t received an answer yet, but that she felt good whenever she prayed, so we tried an experiment and we all knelt and prayed with her in the lesson. Each person in the room said a short prayer asking to know if that the Book of Mormon Is true, and then she prayed. When it we were all finished, we asked her if she felt those same feelings that she felt before, and she said yes. We explained to her how the spirit works and eventual she pretty much said, “well what do I need to do to get baptized?” So we are excited about that.

We finished the lessons with Reed, and he says he wants to be baptized, but were just not sure if he is ready. He threw a huge fit at Church yesterday when his friend who is a member wanted tried to get him to stay for all 3 hours of church. He usually just stays for sacrament and then leaves. He was really upset yesterday and we could just tell hes not ready yet.

So what are you guys going to do for the 4th of July? Anything super exciting? I don’t think they want us proselyting to much that evening, so our ward mission leader is going to take us on base with his family and watch the firework show. Time is just flying by way too fast. I remember last summer with Elder Taylor like is was yesterday. Really weird. Well, I think I better go. A member is taking us bowling in about an hour and I still need to email President. I love you Mom, I love you Dad! Thank you so much for your emails! I love you family!

Love, Josh