November 2

Well well, it's November already. Man the mission goes by fast. I'll see you all too soon.

Elder Swenson and I are doing really well. Our zone this month finally hit 15 baptisms and it was awesome! That's the first time this zone has exceeded 12 baptisms in at least 2 1/2 years. We ourselves had 1 baptism last month, and we hope to see lots more coming up soon.

We had one disappointment this week. We have been teaching Johnny and Maria and their children. They are a great couple and we really love teaching them. Well this past week we got word from Maria that Johnny didn't like the idea of paying 10% for tithing and that he said he can't follow that so there is no more point in meeting with us. We had an appointment with them then on monday and Johnny opened up and talked to us about his doubt. We helped him to resolve his concern and recognize the need for faith in the Lord to be able to complete with it. It looks like Maria and her daughter Christina will probably get baptized next week but we will have to wait a little while with Johnny so that he can come to church more. It's really hard because his bosses really are strict and don't want to give him sundays off. We'll work with it though. I think that it's more important that they get baptized as a family than if I get to see it. At this point I've realized that a missionary doesn't "have baptisms." I won't be able to say "I had this many baptims on my mission" because if I really did cause one of those baptisms I probably did something wrong. The Holy Ghost truly causes the baptisms. Anything more or less than that is priestcraft. Elder Bednar says so.

Well this is a short letter but I'm heading downtown now to go hang out with some of my zonies. We're going bowling and we'll go have some fun. It'll probably be my last time downtown as a full-time missionary. Que wierd!

Oh two cool things that happened: We got another companionship added to our zone (cause we rock!!) Elder Odell and Elder Pavedo. They are awesome. Elder Odell is an ex-zone leader (we now have 6 of those in our zone), and Elder Povedo is a greenie who is a native of Colombia.
Also, we got rid of our 2006 ugly van, and got a BRAND NEW 2011 Chevy Colorado with like 43 miles on it! It is AWESOME. It's really little but has the 4x4 off-road package. It's super dope. I actually wouldn't mind having something like that at home.

Anyways I gotta go. I love you a bunch. I know we didn't talk today but we'll have plenty of time to do that in 3 weeks.

I love you!

Elder J.