Its been a great week! A lot of things are happening now. First of all last Thursday I drove for the first time in seven months. It was an 09 Malibu, and it drove nice. One of our zone leaders lost his driving privledges and we went on exchanges, so I had to drive. It wasn't bad at all though, people here complain about traffic, but it ain't nothing!
Other than that we have been teaching a bit more often, trying to go through the former investigators and just figure out what their deals are. We found a lot of them moved, so we just got to toss those. We started to teach an old lady who was just lonely and "has been taught by the missionaries for 20 years" but she can seem to remember any of the doctrines, doesn't accept commitments, and just wants free service. So I kind of laid down the law and just told her what our job is, and talked to her about family history. I told her we may drop by periodically to check up on her, got her in contact with family history reps, because she has a passion for that, and talked with the ward leadership who will be finding her a friend to fellowship her and having some of the youth help her out instead of the missionaries. We are hoping that will soften her heart and that she can be prepared to accept the message sometime, hopefully before she dies.
Those are hard situations, but it needs to be done, if we can't teach them and have them progressing then we ought to be teaching others and finding new people to teach.
Speaking of that I have gotten really good about talking to absolutely everyone I see on the streets and we have been finding so many new people to work with. It is awesome! I ran into a kid at the park, and I don't know if I told you about it, but he's super excited to learn about prophets and willingly gave his number and address to us. We have a return appointment. And we have set up more appointments the past couple weeks than I ever have, of course some will fall through, but that is just something we learn to get used to.
The forty day fast has really been paying off. President Christison decided to do a forty day fast with the missionaries and not involve the ward. Our companionship fasted on sunday. On monday in just the three hours of afternoon tracting we had 18 QGCs (Quality Gospel Conversations) which are engaging conversations, in which the companionship must teach, testify, and invite for a contact to count. Our mission's standard of excellence is 70 a week or 10 a day. We also set up 5 appointments with people we tracted into! It was a good day.
Lately I have also been watching training segments on the Preach my Gospel DVDs with my companion at lunch and we have been trying to implement the instruction in those into our planning, teaching, and finding efforts.
We set a 13 year old son of a part member family with a baptismal date for the 16th and received consent from both parents. He's so ready! His mom's a member, the dad's not, and he goes to church almost every week and has not missed a youth activity in like 6 months. Hopefully he can be an example to his parents, and his older siblings when they are let out of jail. He's taking a good path and the Bishops family is doing awesome with fellowship. He actually asked if the Bishop could baptize him. Which is ultimately the goal in this mission. Our President says if he had his way we'd all send home our baptismal clothing. The members need to baptize, because once the missionary is gone the fellowship and support is gone, but if you involve members in the teaching, and have members fill the baptism program it will yield a stronger support system and a larger chance for lifetime activity.
We also had the opportunity to go to the temple this morning. It was awesome! I stayed awake the whole time too. I just felt like I must be a greedy person with how much I got out of it this time. I also got bike fenders at the bike shop down there. I grabbed the wrong size! :( So I taked to a bike mechanic at a shop up here and asked if he'd trade me out the mountain bike ones for the thinner ones. He said he'd order the ones I need and he'd love to trade them out on Friday, so that's good news.
I love you guys, I hope its not too smokey there, but I'm not sure, because we have smoke up here from the fires, or at least thats what the Denver news channels attribute it to. Oh well though. I hope all is well! Is the practice sale almost finalized? SCARY! That is such a weird thing to think. Well, pray for me and I'll pray for you! Take care!
Love ya,
Elder tom Stevenson
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