Miracles in July

Dear Everyone,

This past week was really awesome. We found 12 investigators just last weekend, from saturday to sunday. We've been working really hard and are on track to meet all of our goals for the month of july and exceed them by a lot. We are finding a lot of investigators every day. Yesterday was tough because we had a problem every time we wanted to get going and proselyte, but the Lord blessed us for being diligent when we did get out there, and we knocked the door of a woman named Aime, who accepted us into her house and we taught her the first lesson, and she told us that God has been preparing her for the past 4 months for this. She accepted a baptismal date for the 20th of August. We felt really good that lesson. Last saturday was one of the best days of either my mission or Elder Lemke's. We started it off with having a lesson with our investigator Rafael Gonzales, who accepted a baptismal date for August 13. Then we had our investigator Silvio attend a baptismal service with us. Then we went to go find the elect a little while later and brought a member, Luis Romero, with us. We found 3 new investigators with him and had 3 member present lessons as a result. That was really cool. So sunday, since we had such a great saturday, I was expecting like a big trial of our faith or a drought or something, but it proved to be just as good or better. We found 8 new investigators and some of them seem really really interested. We also had 5 investigators show up at church but some of them didn't take the sacrament or had to go early so we couldn't count them numerically, but in our hearts we felt like we had met all the standards of excellence this week. That was really cool. I don't think I've ever had that happen before. It really pumped us up for this week, and this week hasn't been a disappointment at all. We had a lesson this morning with Rafael again and he is stoked. He said there's nothing about the Word of Wisdom that's going to hold him back in his progress and he's committed to keeping this commandment. He's also very mindful of his baptism and feels that this is what God wants of him right now.
Just so you all understand, the standards of excellence are some standards President Doll and the Mission Council agreed upon at the beginning of year. These standards help us judge whether we are completing our purpose and help us to have a high goal to reach for. The standard is:

1 baptism a month
2 investigators with a baptismal date at all times (we have 3)
3 investigators at church weekly
4 new investigators weekly (we destroyed that with 13 this week)
5 investigator lessons with a member present (we had 8)
20 total lessons in a week (we had exactly 20)
70 contacts (we had 97)

That is a tough one to reach, but we did it and plan to continue doing it. We know there will be hard times but the Lord so far has blessed us immeasurably and we know he will continue to do so predicated upon our worthiness.

I have to go like now. But I love you all very very much.

Love,

Elder J