Wednesday, September 24, 2014

ANXIOUSLY ENGAGED IN WORTHY CAUSES

In which our adventurer to the north sees progress among some of his choicest connections:

Hello, All!

Hello all! This was a really good week. First of all, hooray for not living in Mexico! I’m so proud of Max for doing what he’s doing. Different kinds of trials, I suppose. You’ve got hot and humid, and I’ve got -40°. It’ll be interesting to see how the work compares. I think it’s a given that you’ll see more people baptized. Living common-law is an issue up here as well.

We’ve been staying really busy this last transfer. We’ve got standards of excellence in the mission, and one of those standards is to teach 20 lessons per week (lessons being with nonmembers, less-actives or active members). Previously in my mission the highest I’d achieved in a week was 18. It’s pretty tough to get to 20. This last week we taught 24 lessons. This week we’ve set a goal to teach 31 lessons. Elder Ganley and I want to teach 38 lessons in a week before he goes home. It’s so amazing to see so many prepared, humble people! The majority of the lessons we’re teaching are to less-active members.

Skyler is still doing really well. He gave a talk yesterday in ward conference! He was nervous but he did great. He’s got such a strong testimony and love of the Gospel. He says he wants to serve a mission, so we’ll see if that happens. Travis is also doing well! This week he was working, so we’re going to teach him on Saturday. He’s steadily moving forward. Some concerns have come up but we’ve been able to address them and he’s happy to be taking these steps! Eric came to church for the first time yesterday! It was ward conference so it was totally different from what we usually do, but he had a great time. I asked him what he thought and he commented that everyone seemed to be so happy. Well, Eric, people tend to be happy when they’re a part of Heavenly Father’s church! We’ve got some lessons set up with new investigators this week, so I’ll let you know how those go and if those people actually end up investigating.

We had our mission tour this week! Elder Martino of the Seventy came up and gave some stupendous trainings. I’m still not a cryer, but he got me really close. Close. Not all the way there. It’s amazing how well those men know the scriptures. I would love to know them like that. We read a bit of Moses 6 and he unfolded it simply and it was awesome. I’m really not doing a good job explaining everything. Tuesday morning Elder Martino spoke to half of the mission (the other half was the day before) and gave us a broad training. A lot of it focused on working with members. Tuesday evening he gave a training at a local leadership meeting with stake presidencies and ward councils. Zone leaders were also invited. Wednesday morning we had a special Mission Leadership Council with him where we discussed some goals we wanted to set for the entire mission and how to carry those out. Really enlightening stuff.

Thank you all for reading! You’re beautiful people and God loves you. Make good choices and you’ll be blessed!

Keep the faith,
Elder Eli



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