They're Finding Us!

Well, this week, it was a lot of fun!   We are trying to do what we as missionaries should be doing - finding and teaching new investigators, preparing them for baptism, the works....

BUT.........

The only people who really want to talk to us and spiritually progress right now are our less-active members who we didn't know existed until they came up and contacted us on the streets! They're also the only ones we can get to consistently come to church.  :)

I personally think it is a very good take on missionary work. Probably about 75% of the members in our area are less-active. The only problem is, we want to reach the goals we have set for  "investigators at church" and "members present at a lesson".

We're still working on a good balance between the two ;)

Well, this week was really successful when it comes to less-active work, and pretty okay when it comes to investigator work, so I say drop of awesome for us!

Thanksgiving and Cold Weather!

Among other events this week:

We exceeded our goal for finding new investigators!  That always makes me happy especially because it was so hard to find investigators at the beginning of my mission :)

We had 4 Thanksgiving dinners!  The first one was at the top of this really nice hotel on the island.  Our table had a large view of the Gulf of Mexico.  I saw the ocean for the first time since my first area!   The menu included cornbread stuffing and seafood!

This was the view from the hotel while eating dinner!

In district meeting, we had a very creative lesson that revolved around a snowman.  I wish I would have taken a picture...it was kind of adorable.  I really don't miss the snow!

It was cold the first part of the week !  Now its back to the comfortable 70's.  This Christmas is going to be paradise!! :)

I am absolutely in love with this area!  It is so much fun! The people are fantastic and always have interesting stories to tell.  I'm sure enjoying Texas! :D

Meeting a Zone Goal!

So, in a kind of a spur of the moment, surprising, and miraculous way we had a - wait for it - BAPTISM!!!!! on Saturday :D :D :D

So, it's pretty cool the timing of all of this.  The mission, for the month of November, had a goal of baptising 110 people - more than we have baptized in a month in a very long time!  Our zone had a goal of 20 people this month. 

That's where this story comes in:  Our baptism was a young boy.  He didn't have a date set, but he had been learning as we were teaching another individual in his family.  Last weekend, we were leaving the house after a lesson.  We weren't even talking about baptism when he all of a sudden said, "Hey! I want to get baptized!  When can I get baptized?"  We then set a date for Sunday (the 1st of December). It was pretty cool because he had the desire himself.

We were super excited and so then we informed our district leader.  At this time, our zone had 19 baptisms for this month.  So, he said we should try to move it to Saturday (the 30th of November) so we could hit our goal. We were a little apprehensive about it because his family was supposed to go to out of town on Saturday so they could be back by Sunday.  However, we stopped by on Monday evening, and the first thing they said was they had bad news: instead travelling on Saturday, they would be going on Sunday.  We just smiled and said, No problem!  We'll do the baptism on Saturday! 

So, long story short, he was baptized in November, our zone hit its goal of 20, and our mission baptized 113 people! :D :D :D  It is amazing!  The timing was absolutely perfect and miraculous!

Potential Investigators!

Something that I am thinking about is giving our members a Potential Investigators form.  That is something that we use to keep track of all the people we come in contact with who have the potential of becoming an investigator.   Then, they could write down all the people they know who have potential of being interested in the church.