Excitement and Miracles

Well it was a pretty exciting week for us. we had quite a few miracles happen. First of all, I think I beat my old record of 12 new investigators, with being able to find 13 new investigators to teach!

Plus, we are getting very close to baptism with a couple of our investigators, namely 'SC'. He just turned 9 years old, and we've been teaching him for a couple of weeks now. he is one of the smartest kids I have ever met! It is amazing how much he understands what we teach him. His parents are both members, but neither have come to church for a really long time, despite the fact that theifamilies are active, or at least mostly active. I dont know what is holding them back, but SC's stepdad has been sitting in on the lessons and has been really helpful as we've been teaching SC, his mom on the otherhand generally hasnt been around, which is sad to see, but I think that if y'all could pray for that family it would help a lot. SC has told us that he wants to be baptized, and we committed their family to talk all together about it, so we'll see come Thursday when we go back.

Everything else has been going really well, we were very close to getting a lot of people out to church but SC was the only one that was able to make it because he came with his grandma who is very active in our ward. We were really hoping for a couple of others to make it, and called them right before church and they were excited to come, so then the meeting had started and they weren't there, so we called again and their family said they had left already but we didn't see them. So we were almost nervous that they might have gone to the church right next door to us, and after sacrament Elder O and I went next door to do some reconaissance to see if we could see them, and when we got there we were pretty much the only white people in that building.

They had their welcome where you go around and greet everybody and it felt like everyone was flocking to come say hello to us. We hid our tags on the inside of our jackets because we didn't want to cause contention or anything, but it was just kinda funny because everyone was coming up to us and welcoming us, which was pretty cool. But sadly we didnt find our investigators so we tried to get out of there as quickly as possible. It was pretty interesting to see just how inviting and aesthetically pleasing it was but it was just not the same spirit.

This upcomming week is starting to look really promising, we already have a lot of appointments with a lot of people and our dinner callendar is looking pretty good as well. We are super short on miles at the moment, so we will be doing a lot more walking until May comes, and possibly even some bike riding. So transfers are also next week, so y'all know how that is. With my history I'll probably be leaving seeing as how I've been in each of my areas for two transfers. I really hope I get to stay but ya never know. Also, We've heard from the mission that USPS is going to charge for mail to be forwarded and the mission doesnt have the money to cover that cost so mail will have to be sent to me directly otherwise I have to wait until transfers or interviews to receive anything that gets sent to the mission office. Soooo, I will let you know next week what my address will be for the next six weeks. Well, hope all is well, I'll talk to y'all soon!

Happy Easter!

Hola!
So who loved conferece? I did! It was really good, I think the general theme I got from it was self reliance in the home. The Sunday sessions had a lot to do with the Christ and His Atonement which was fitting for an Easter Sunday.

This week was fairly excellent for us here in the Brockett Ward. I think this was the most tiring week of my mission. I
have amped up my workouts lately, with running a mile or two almost every morning and trying to do some upper body circuits every other night before bed. This week we worked our bunns off and so I slacked a little when it came to running this week, but I am determined to lay down the law and go for a run at least 4 times a week. My companion isn' too much of a work out freak like I am trying to get myself back into from being a lazy bum, but he's willing to go running with me so
that's good.

We also had zone conference this week and it was really great. We have been issued the challenge to read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover this transfer and it is pretty sweet! It is easy to get behind though! I'm about a day and a half off but I should be able to catch up pretty quickly. We were able to commit a new investigator we found this week to baptism so we are pretty excited to see how that goes. We've been trying to go through our roster and visit every person on there and build their trust and we went to the appartment of one family who had moved apparently without any notice to much of anyone, but we asked the new resident if she wanted to learn about the church and she accepted and if it be according to the will of the Lord she will be baptized. She is going through a lot in her life right now with family and other situations and we havent seen her since our first visit but she should be back this week so we'll see. On Friday we have a dinner appointment with a part memeber family. The husband, Brother H., is not a member but is really close to becoming one, or so we've felt. He's made tremendous amounts of progress over the past while from what we here. Elder C. of the Seventy is his home teacher and he said that he basically gave a soft commitment to baptism in one of his recent visists. When we saw brother H. last we had a really good lesson with him just trying to get him to recognize the spirit's influence in his life. We almost had him backed into a corner
where we could have potentially committed him to baptism if the spirit allowed, but then he pulled a fast one on us and asked if we were hungry and heated up some pizza for us. After leaving both Elder O. and I were somewhat perplexed becasue the last time we visited it seemed like he was one tought cookie but this time he really opened up and I think we might really work towards giving him a baptismal date when we go over this Friday. Well, we have interviews this Thursday and I'm kind of looking forward to that and almost not at the same time but I know it
will be really good, it always is.

I have not received any package yet but I would not be suprised to see one in a couple of days, if you have already sent it. I will definitely write a letter to Nanny and Papa this week. I need to do better on writing, I just get lazy and then distracted with other things and before I know it it;'s been a month or two since I've hand written anyone. I wish y'all a wonderful week and
can't wait to hear from ya next week!

-Alex