Monday, July 21, 2014

July 21st 2014

July 21st 2014
 
It was good to hear from all of you as always!  Thanks for your constant letters and support.  Well, this week was pretty good.  We are slowly but surely building up a decent group of people to teach.  A couple of them are progressing very well and they are helping us to find other people to teach as well.  It's kind of awesome  We aren't teaching Angel right now because he began working a lot and we lost contact with him, but we are teaching about 9-10 of his extended family members and we are going to start teaching more this week.  It would be so sweet if basically this whole family got baptized.  Three of them came to church this week: I., T., and G.  They really liked it, but the problem is that they are really attached to the Christian church that they are attending right now.  In fact, the day before they came to church with us T. invited us to come to their church with them.  We weren't really sure what to say, but I think that we will try to go.  She also asked us what we would do if we got an answer that their church is true.  They could be a bit difficult, but they are really great people.  We actually had a great turnout at church this week.  We had 6 people that we are teaching show up and two others people that live in our area that showed up with members.  R. came again and is progressing really, really well.  We taught him again last night and boy is he convinced.  We are trying to prepare him for August 17th, but it is a bit complicated because like Ethan said, we have to teach the fifth lesson now before baptism.  It is a worldwide change.  Well that's about all that is new here.  Not much, huh?

I'm glad to hear that you all are doing well.  That's funny that Caitlin was the brave one mom.  How old are they again?  That's nuts about the rain too.  Hopefully the damage isn't too bad, but I can imagine that it is significant.  That's super cool about the new temple movie.  I'm excited to see the difference between the three of them.  I really miss going to the temple.  I am very excited to go again when I get home.  It is a very special place.  From the sound of it mom you and Maddie are like the exercise queens.  Keep it up.  I need to follow your example.  I understand exactly how you feel dad, that early morning exercise is tough.  Way to go!  2 weeks straight is great.  That's great that you were able to choose a counselor.  I have no clue who he is haha, but I hope that everything works out really well.  Well, love you all.  Talk to you in a week.

Elder Schow  

July 14, 2014

July 14, 2014

Hello everyone!
Well this week was pretty good. We saw a lot of successes in many areas of the work. We had a zone conference on Tuesday for about 5 hours.   (way too long) But at the same time it was nice for a change of pace. Sometimes it is easy to get a bit bogged down in the everyday routine of things so it is nice to change it up every once in a while. Otherwise one could feel like they are living out the plot of the movie grounhog day haha.
Well we had several good things happen this week. We were able to find 11 new people to teach this week! Several of these 11 are part of families. It is sooo much better to teach families because they can support one another and help each other to remember to read, go to church etc. We feel that many of these people will progress really well. If you want to pray for them thier names are S, N, A, B, E, R, T, G, I, I (yes, like Nacho Libre), and S. It was a miracle that we were able to find so many.
We saw a lot of progress with R. this week. He came to church again with his mom E. They both really, really loved it. When we taught him last night we invited him to pray to know if what we had taught is true, and he told us that he didn`t need to pray because he already knew that was true because he had felt it. He is going to leave his work early a few times a week so that we can teach him and prepare him for baptism. He has been through a lot of hard things. His wife left him a while ago, and when that happened he let his house go to pot. We are going to organize a service project with the ward missionaries and the young men to help him to get everything back in order. We feel that it will be a nice surprise for him. He is a great guy. We are hoping that a few of our other investigators will start to progress like he is. A lot of them have kind of fallen off the face of the earth. Hopefully we don't lose them.
I'm glad that you guys had a good week. It doesn't sound like anything too exciting happened, but that's just the way it is sometimes haha. Have fun with your croquet set, and don't get too sunburned in all that heat. I'll try to send some rain your way because we have plenty haha. Love you all. Talk to you soon!
Elder Schow