August 4, 2009

Hey family!
So the mission is doing great with baptisms so far. By the end of this week our mission should be up to 90 baptisms so far for this six-week transfer, with two more weeks left after that, and 100 more baptismal dates set. To put that into perspective, we usually baptize between 90 and 120 people every transfer. It looks like we'll destroy that. And next transfer is looking good as well.
The mission is doing great. And, obviously, President Bassett is pretty happy about that.
The training blitz we did a while back really got the mission going in the right direction, it seems.
We had a great zone conferrence Tuesday. We talked a lot about finding. Elder Gomez and I gave a training on working with members, which was pretty neat. It went well, I thought. And I learned a lot from it. Usually missionaries go to members homes and say "who do you know that we can teach?" (usually after a spiritual thought or a short lesson). Our training was on how they need to be more than that. A lot a members don't have anyone for the missionaries to work with, but they really want to help. So we talked about how we can use members more by leaving them with simple things that they would feel comfortable doing. For example, coming to a lesson, sitting with an investigater at church, giving a friend a church video, etc. Things we should already know, but often don't do.
Speaking of, how's the missionary work going with the Mace family? I know you all have been a little busy (to say the least) lately, but any good experiences?
Elder Gomez and I didn't think we would have any baptisms this week-- we thought we'd have to push our investigaters dates back-- but we will have two baptisms this Saturday. It will be for Tracy and Lakota. Tracy is 13, Lakota is 11 I think. Their mom was suppose to get baptized as well, but she wants to wait a little bit longer. We were going to have the kids wait as well, but she wants them to go ahead.
We have several more baptisms set up for August 22nd. So that should be another big day.
We found some great new investigaters (finally!) yesterday. Their names are Justin and Samantha. I street contacted Justin a while back and set up a time to visit him. But Justin wasn't home at the set up time, and we couldn't ever seem to catch him. We almost gave up, but decided to try again. We stopped by yesterday, and he and his wife were home. We taught them, and they really loved the message. I'm excited to continue teaching them.
We went on exchanges this week, as well. That was a new experience. I've never really had to "evaluate" before. It's a little intimidating giving feed back to a district leader that's been out for longer than you have. :-P But I think it went okay.
And because of Zone Conferrence and exchanges, out finding numbers are finally starting to go up. Not drastically, but a little bit, so that's good. :-) Hopefully it keeps up.
I think that's about all that's happened this week.
Love,Jason
P.S. I won't be a teenager any more. It's the big Two-Zero. :-P I got three packages in the mail this week, so I assume that's all of them. Thank you!
And no, I haven't opened them yet. But I'm not waiting until 2010, whoever wrote that. lol. :-D