Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Happy Third Year Anniversary Dayton Spanish Branch!

Family!

This past week was a really good one!  We started it off right last P-day; a member had us over to his house for a BBQ, then he took us bowling!  Then the work began.

The branch made a huge push this past week to help the new family that moved in a few weeks ago.  We finally finished digging that massive trench, and along with that the branch also fixed their roof and a wall that was in pretty bad shape.  Hooray for service!

We went to teach one of the less active families with the Elders Quorum president this past week.  When we got there, the mom was asleep, the dad had just left, but the two boys were there (11 and 8).  We went in and talked to them for a bit anyways, and it went pretty well after we had them turn off the Teen Titans show they were watching.  I had forgotten how distracting TV can be to little kids...

We had a great lesson with a family that we met a few weeks ago.  Ever since then we've been trying to see them again, but the dad is always working, and we haven't been able to catch him home.  We finally did though, and it went really well! 
Finding a new family to teach is always awesome!

We were going to bed on Thursday night when we got a text from the Zone leaders.  They told us that we had to drive over to their chapel to do weekly planning the next day.  That hasn't happened before, so we were wondering what was going on.  When we got there, we found out that they were doing planner checks!  I haven't ever had that happen before, so I had no clue what to expect.  Basically they went through every single day in my planner during the last month, looked at how effective my planning was, and then offered me suggestions on how to improve.  I thought my planning had been pretty good, but I guess I've still got some things to learn...

Our district leader gave us the challenge to try and hand out as many mormon.org cards as possible during this week.  As a way to start it off, we went to a pizza buffet place, and he had us pick people for him to go talk to and give cards to.  One of the other Elders picked a youth basketball team that had just walked in.  He sat there for a while trying to figure out how to start the conversation, then he went to go give them some cards.  To break the ice, he purposely tripped right by their table, then he was able to start talking to them about the gospel from that!  I was pretty impressed.

Yesterday we celebrated the 3rd anniversary of the Dayton Spanish Branch.  The stake president and his wife came, he gave a short message, and afterwards we had a little Thanksgiving themed get together thing in the gym.  It was the perfect way to help the members invite their friends to church, and there were a lot of investigators and less actives there.  We actually set a new sacrament attendance record (at least since I've been here)!

We had some really great lessons with D----- this past week, and we invited him to be baptized again last night.  He said that "we had him in the tractor beam" and that he was getting close.  We talked a lot with him about recognizing an answer, and the Spirit was very strong in that lesson.  I'm super excited for him!

That's about it.  Thank you for your letters and the pictures.  Take care of each other, and let me know if there's anything I can pray for, for you guys.  Thanks so much for being so amazing!  Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Foote
The Big Trench Project