Sept 14

Dear Family, Friends and anyone else who reads my blog,

This last week was very difficult to begin with, we had very limited success for the first few days. Then saturday and sunday went really well! We had 10 new investigators in one day, and they all seemed to be pretty interested. Our investigators have been disappointing us a lot lately, falling through with appointments and such, but they are getting replaced by other people with more interest and we hope to see some baptisms come out of our efforts soon. We have one investigator on baptismal date, Jorge Velez, who is really awesome. He's had a rough past, but he is really willing to change his life and repent so that he can be baptized and receive the priesthood. We gave him a blessing on sunday, because he has a smoking addiction, and it was one of the most powerful blessings I've ever participated in. I know that the Lord will bless him in his efforts to overcome this difficult addiction, in addition to all the other changes that he has made.
We have been doing some work with some less-active members, especially the Hermana Espinosa. She's not really willing to reciprocate the amount of effort that we've been putting into her progress by keeping commitments, so we're going to leave her alone for now and see if she's willing to start doing some work to gain a testimony again and come back to church.
My personal gospel study is going really well. I just finished the Book of Mormon in spanish, and it went really well. I also have been studying the New Testament and trying to study the pamphlets as was suggested at Mission Council. I really like that, I feel like I gain more of an appreciation for the simplicity and directness of the pamphlets, and sometimes it puts concepts in a different light for me that is interesting.
I went on exchanges with Elder McDonnell yesterday, and it was a great experience. I can tell that he is really trying hard to finish his mission on a high note like Elder Lemke and I are. He has a great spirit about him and is exceptional at contacting and teaching. All of the investigators that we visited yesterday were either on baptismal date or accepted one when we taught them. It was incredible to see so much going on in an english area. I have never seen such receptive investigators as he has. It is impressive to me to see the Hand of the Lord at work in the Hyde Park ward. While I was with him we set this investigator he has on date. Her name is Jing Jing. She is really cool. She doesn't speak very good english, she speaks Mandarin (Danny Anderson would love it). She hasn't ever really had much experience in religion and is super open to the gospel. There are like a million returned missionaries in Elder McDonnell's ward and like 4 speak Mandarin. So Isaac came with us and he translated words and concepts that she didn't understand in English. It's the first time I've been in a lesson where I haven't understood what was being said. It was uber weird.

Gotta Go!

Love,

Elder J.