Heyo - Wednesady 6/29

Dear Family,

This past few weeks has been a time of a lot of adjustment and it has been a great opportunity to shoulder the load as a zone leader. My zone is great, I am very pleased with the District Leaders, they are very good Elders. Although this zone is awesome, we have a lot of work to do. I'm very concerned about the output and productivity of this the biggest zone of the mission. We have only had two baptisms this month, and few baptismal dates. We have a lot of potential that I feel we are not reaching. Elder Lemke and I have spent a lot of time considering what we should do and will continue implementing ideas to help our missionaries. We hope to be more personal and help out those companionships who are of particular concern. We have recently implemented a focus on setting baptismal dates and really rooting out the investigators who aren't willing to progress, and it seems to be well received by the missionaries here. We were called to succeed.

We don't have many solid investigators, but we do have a few. We just found a man named Jose who is an alcoholic and wants to change his life around. Next time we meet with him we are planning on setting him on baptismal date, so long as he keeps his commitments. We also have a young boy age 10 named Silvio who will be baptized on July 30. We are working with the kids of a recent convert, Maria y Jose and hoping that they too will make much progress. Tonight we are planning on committing them to baptism. We have also been finding like crazy. We found 7 new investigators this week. One a day. We also have been doing more contacting than I think I ever have in my mission. It's been really great.

As far as less actives and active members, we are working on a map that has all of them marked on it, we have over 70 member families and are trying to make time to run by them all and figure out who wants to become active and who has referrals. It has been a good process so far and we are hoping it should bear fruit.

My studies lately have become more and more effective as I have studied over important topics and concerns that I have. I re-read the Fourth Missionary and decided to give my whole heart 100% to the Lord and put everything else in a box, so as to have complete consecration. Till now I have always said I will give all my heart except 1 or 2 things, but now I've decided to go all in. Take a dive into the deep end. I'm tired, I'm fatigued and I'm happier and more content than I've been in my entire life. I've felt the Lord work in me and through me and I have joy.

I love you all. I would write more, but I don't have any time. Unfortunately it only gave me 20 minutes today and I had other things to do.

Love,

Elder J.