Week 73 - excited for these last 6 months of my mission and the opportunity I'll have to give Him my all

This week was great! We're finally seeing more and more success and we are being greatly blessed in the work. 

On Tuesday, we had a lot of new missionaries come up to our zone. One of them was Elder Shepherd! It's good to have my "son" (since he was my trainee) up here with me.

On Wednesday, we had a great lesson with the G family, a family of 7 that we're teaching. In the past, they hadn't really kept their commitments or progressed at all, so we actually almost cancelled the lesson to attend another lesson we had. But we felt impressed to go through with it. When we got to the lesson, we followed up on their reading assignment, which was Alma 32. To our surprise, their 9 year old daughter named R pulled out 2 pieces of paper and timidly gave it to us. Not only had she read, but she copied down the verses word for word! Being 9 years old, I doubt she really understood a lot, but she was so excited about it. Well, it appeared to us that nobody else had read, so we went on with the lesson. To start off, I asked the family, "What is faith?" As soon as the words left my lips, their 16 year old daughter M immediately quoted Alma 32:21 word for word! She read too! And she quoted that scripture better than I could have done it! We were both so happy and excited about the progress they had made since the last time we saw them. The parents didn't read, but by the pride that we saw in their faces of their kids' examples, I wouldn't be surprised to find that they read the next commitment. Now they just need to come to church! We plan to commit them to a baptism date tomorrow, so I ask your prayers on their behalf. 

Thursday, we spent the day in Warsaw again because we had a lot of appointments down there.  We had a lesson with an investigator named R. We taught her about the Book of Mormon and talked a little about prayer. At the end of the lesson, I started inviting her to baptism and as soon as she heard me say "will you be baptized" she cut me off and said, "Oh, yes! That's exactly what I want!" We committed her to prepare for March 5th. We're excited about it! :)

On Friday, we had a zone meeting to start out the transfer. President Cleveland wanted us to set some goals as a zone. So Elder Weese and I put together a zone meeting and it went great! The Spirit was so strong and we had a lot of participation from the missionaries in the zone. We set a goal to have 12 baptismal dates as a zone, 12 people at church on average weekly, and to be perfectly obedient and diligent to the proselyting schedule. Some of the missionaries even said that it was one of the best zone meetings they had ever been to! We all left the meeting excited and motivated to do more. At the beginning of the transfer we had 1 baptismal date in the zone. Since we set the goal, we have 5. So we're seeing the fruits of our labors come forth before our eyes. 

On Saturday, we had to wake up at 4 a.m. which was painful, but it was worth it because we got to go down to the temple! We went with Antonia Alvarado and Senobia Cruz, a couple of recent converts in our branch, to do baptisms for the dead. They loved it! After we finished, the temple workers there asked us to stick around until noon to help them with ordinances and stuff. So I got to baptize in the temple for my first time and I got to do it in English and Spanish. And then another Elder and I did confirmations for about 2 hours straight! It was great! 

This week was a successful one and we're excited about the stuff that's happening here. I love the Lord and His work. I'm excited for these last 6 months of my mission and the opportunity I'll have to give Him my all. I love you! Have a good week!