'Merica!

 

Yaaay! July 4th! woohoo. It was super fun. Sounds like you guys had a good time too. I miss the good o Lebanon fireworks. We had breakfast with one of our bishops in Riverton ward who hooked us up with some tasty pancakes and scrambled eggs. We went out to this place called Jensen's grove where there's this huuuge sand beach across the lake. We played volleyball in the sand with a bunch of the other missionaries here in Blackfoot. We also played soccer and one of our investigators hung out with us too! Later that night a member invited us to eat at this super tasty restaurant right off Jensen's grove where we ate and watched the fireworks. Twas a good day!

This week was filled with more hard work. tracting. and tracting. finding. and more finding. We've had a really hard time getting referrals, so we've been hitting the pavement! We finally found 3 new investigators from tracting in Idaho! We took them all on a church tour. Their names are Monce, Fransisco, and Emmanuel. They are all super down to earth and are interested in learning more.

My companion and I went to 10th ward (name of the ward =) and we bore our testimonies. I actually talked about my friend Mark and how he decided to go on a mission. I also talked about how we can all make a difference in many people's lives. You might not realize it but people watch you and you have an affect on others for good or bad. Then later that day we passed around a sign up sheet for the members to go out with the missionaries for ONE HOUR and for ONE DAY out of the week in priesthood...and no one signed up! lol, This is going to be harder than I thought. Elder Meza and I've been thinking about how we can help the members in their missionary work...We've started to go to each dinner appointment and teach them the doctrine in the preach my gospel lessons...then we've invited them to read the Follow-up talk by M. Russell Ballard. There's good stuff in there! There's a lot of ways to excite members to do missionary work...and one of them is to teach them legit preach my gospel lessons!

Our companion and I fasted to find our baptism for July. I get more nervous and more nervous because we are already in JULY! Elder Meza and I are trying to figure out what we are doing wrong! lol, the appointment with that one potential baptism date I was telling you about fell through and they're actually in Pocatello. gah! After being in distress and kind of lacking in patience, I was about to give up on my part. As we were walking we saw this young man named Teagen mowing his lawn. We talked to him, laughed, asked if he's listened to the missionaries and said yes. We talked about the message of the restoration, he's actually been to church multiple times, and we set a baptismal date for the 31st of July. Talk about a miracle. 

 Love you lots and I shall see you next week!

'MERICA!

***

Another week in paradise.

Things have been pretty fast paced here. The whole city of Blackfoot is its own zone...so we have a lot more contact with the missionaries here. It's pretty awesome. Inviting people to be baptized daily, accountability, goals...that has all taken on a new meaning for me. Elder Meza has been teaching me a lot. He's only got about 5 weeks left, so he's working his butt off. I want to end my mission that way. There can't be any plateau moments on the mission! Constant diligence!

We've been working SO hard to find our baptism in July. Seriously. Any spare moment we have we are trying to find new investigators. Finally after a solid week of exact obedience and working our tails off...We think we found the person! We were eating this super tasty tender chicken (Aw mwa gosh...like it was soooo good) at the Bishop's house. The Bishop's friend has a son coming into town this weekend who almost got baptized but was kidnapped by a gang. Yeah, super long story. Long story short, this son was adopted and used to have a really rough past, being involved with gangs and whatnot, but he switched his life around. He used to live in Mexico, but he was adopted by a super legit LDS family living here in Blackfoot, Idaho. We will be having a lesson with him and his family this weekend because he still wants to get baptized! We're super excited.

The Spanish branch is having another fiesta! And my man Carlos Martinez (AKA DJ RUDO) is going to provide some wholesome entertainment with his musical skillz. The branch wanted me to make some hand-outs again =D They turned out just nicely =) I'll have to send a picture of it next week because I don't have it with me right now.

Thanks for the cool insights. I really like that quote from David O. McKay. And that's too bad to hear about his son. It's interesting serving a mission here where it's dominated by mormons. There's a lot of awesome members...and then those who are just completely anti and hate mormons. We get the best of both worlds here. It really just comes back down to the basics like what you said...bearing testimony, legit scripture study, ect. 

Well I will end with this quote by M. Russell Ballard...he's become one of my favorite apostles. He's the one that spear headed preach my gospel. heeeere ya go! 

I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the technique of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principle of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life.