Hey / July 20

Hey everyone!
Today was a good day. We had transfers again today. Obviously no changes to me and Elder Lemke. We'll end up finishing out our missions here. We have had a really great transfer, and we're looking forward to even better.

This week has felt like I walk into a furnace every time I walk outside. It's 95 degrees today with a heat index of 107. It's horrible! I've gotten some sun because we work outside a lot. It's not always fun, but the payoff is great.

So back to transfers: this is going to be a great one! President Doll has told Elder Lemke and I that he wants the Chicago Zone to lead the mission in baptisms and that he has full faith in us and our ability to transform the zone. He then gave us a huge group of excellent missionaries to fill up the weak spots in the zone this transfer. We just got Elder McDonnell, who was an Assistant to President, and is more than excited to be a Regular Proselyting Missionary again (as soon as President released him from being an Assistant, he ran out into the lobby of the church where we all were and yelled, "I'M A MISSIONARY!" and then he ran around and gave everyone hugs). He was so sick of that job. Then we got Elder Munoz, who was my old zone leader in Wilmette, and we got Hermana Sosa, Elder White, Elder Shippen, Elder Garcia, and a greenie. So we're excited for the new changes and the new "stacked" Chicago Zone. It's going to be amazing. We have so much potential.

We've been having a lot of success in our area lately. Last week we had 35 lessons, 25 of which were with investigators. That is higher than anything I've ever done in my life. It was excellent. This week we already have 15 lessons, and monday and tuesday are usually less-productive days for us. So this week we'd like to see 40 lessons. That would be double the standard of excellence. It's a really high goal, but it's really possible with the two of us. God has worked so many miracles here. I've seen that as we've consecrated ourselves and spread the fire to other missionaries, the Lord has made it possible that we see more and more success. We've been trying our best to set the example for the Elders and Sisters in our zone and we really hope to see baptisms come out of it. We've gotten really good at having 5 minute lessons and those have helped us to teach people in a more concise and effective way. It helps us root out who has interest and who is just listening to us to be nice. Plus more people say yes to a 5 minute message than they do to a 30 minute message. In Chicago everyone is "really busy right now," so we decided that if a person doesn't have 5 minutes right now to listen to us, odds are they won't ever have 5 minutes. The Lord sent us to them at that moment for a reason. I'm also really excited for something President Doll is going to do, which is refocus us on the Fourth Missionary. He is going to send us all a copy of that talk and we are going to analyze it in one of our upcoming meetings. That will be really helpful. It talks about the importance of the heart "for where your heart is, there will your treasure be also." We have to give the Lord our heart. Completely. That's the only way we can come to celestial glory. It's also the only way to get any kind of personal growth out of missionary work. President and I talked about it extensively over the phone one night and discussed how we can motivate the mission to be the missionaries that he knows they can be. We both felt that many will have their hearts touched by that talk. So we're going to give it a try and see how it helps.

I'm loving the area and loving the work. Being a Zone Leader is tough, but it's rewarding to see all the people and the growth in the areas.

I love you all.

Elder J.