August 6, 2007: A stellar week

Well, not that this may make sense to many of you, but this week was probably the best week in a long time, maybe in my mission, in terms of progress made. By the end of the week, our three investigators with dates for baptism this month (august) all were at church and all are progressing. So i was very happy about that. Although, you would think, by looking at the names of these three people, that i am a Spanish elder. Danilo Frias will be getting baptized this weekend. German Perez and Alexander Martinez will be getting baptized the next weekend. Yesterday at church i taught the Gospel Principles class and, once again, if someone had walked in to that room they probably would have thought this was the Spanish branch. So things are in the process of pickin up again. There is one more week left to the transfer. President Darrington told me last week i'll probably be staying (again) but we'll see about that. I'm going in this last week with the idea that i'll be out of here next week. One of the guys set for the 18'th might move his baptism up to next weekend. If you remember, Alexander Martinez is the guy i've been working with forever...who was on probation....whose wife said no....but he's determined to do it. So we'll be praying for him. I love meeting with him and having him say the closing prayer. "I thank you God for sending your minister to me to teach me the true gospel." Always brings a smile to my face.
One quick question for Mike, or for anyone who may know.....when you came home from your mission, we often times ate corn beef hash for breakfast. What goes into that? I want to make it. Lately i've been making hashbrowns, eggs, and ham. Oh so good, a tasty treat. Thats my new breakfast.
I had a couple of cool experiences this week. On Wednesday we had a little training on more effective contacting, ways to talk with people. Afterwards, we drove over to a street named Copper Ridge Circle, which is a street i've been thinking of for a few weeks. We biked past it once and ever since then it has stuck in my memory. Well finally we got over to it. We walked up to the first house and knocked. Using my newfound techniques, we taught the man for 20-25 minutes or so and set up a time to come back the next day. It was pretty amazing. The first house we knocked, and actually the only house we knocked on because we had to leave after that. But for a week i had just kept putting it off for some reason, and Wednesday felt like the right day. Also on Wednesday we went to the temple for a sealing of a family here in the Sanford ward. This family is pretty sweet. Sister Bendoski comes amazing, although not as good as mom's style. But it was nice to go to the temple for just a little bit of the day. Also, on the way to the temple i saw a van drive by that was covered in the Dark Side of the Moon cd cover art. I'll send a pic.
Friday night we had a ward party. They called it a Louisiana Boil. They boil shrimp, chicken, and sausage and then just drump it out on a table and you grab what you want. Well, the cool part of the story is that there was also a cake auction to raise money for the boy scouts. My companion and i decided to make a Book of Mormon cake. we borrowed some food coloring and spent a bit of time trying to get the right color. We ended up using tons and tons of food coloring. We then realized that whoever would eat it would have quite the stained mouth. Well someone bought it for 24 bucks and then i'm sure they regretted it. We also used peanut butter puff balls to spell out "The Book of Mormon." Oh, and of course i got pictures of the beauty.
Well the work is going well. Can't really complain. We just keep on working and we know things will come from it. Bishop doesn't want me to leave. Bishop always comments on how he rarely comes across something in the ward that i haven't already found out myself.
Oh, a funny story. We talked with a lady for half an hour or so, a nice lesson about the restoration of the gospel. At the end i asked if we could pray with her and she told me no, because she didn't know what kind of evil spirits we might have. "You never know..." is what she then said. But i asked her to pray, which she did, in which she called us servants of God. So first we have evil spirits, then we are servants of God.
Well i hope all goes well with the baby on the way. I'll make sure to keep Jen and...Wade Matthew in my prayers. I hope this is a message of encouragement for you Jen, but keep in mind this bit of info. I myself was born 7 weeks too early, and look how i turned out.....I'm not sure if that is encouraging or discouraging to know how i turned out from being born early. I blame that more on my upbringing.
Well, like i said, one more week till the transfer. We'll probably be having some changes. There's a lot of zone leaders going home. Pretty soon the mission is going to have a lot of different faces. Enjoy the pics that i'll send.
Love you all. Thanks for your e-mails. I'll talk to you next week. It's true :)