Family!
Super awesome
week! I'll tell you about it!
We had a ton of
meetings this week, one of which was our mission zone conference. It was
one of the most powerful meetings I've been in on my mission. We set a
goal as a mission to reach 345 baptisms by June! To help us reach that
goal, we have another goal of baptizing 100 people in the month of March!
In this area of the U.S. the record for most baptisms that have ever happened
in a month is 68, which we set last year. So 100 is a huge stretch!
To help us get pumped for March, all this month we are participating in March
madness: missionary style. Every week we are competing with all of the
other zones to see who can find the most new investigators, extend baptism the
most times, have the most members present at lessons, or have the most people
in church. This week the focus was on new investigators.
We really focused hard
as a Spanish zone, and at the end of the week we came in with 196 new
investigators! The previous record was 60 in a week! As we really
focused on working extremely hard and doing all we could to achieve our goals,
we saw tons of miracles and we were accompanied by grace all week long.
It really helped me to see that there is always more we can do. We can
never get complacent. This week helped me to realize that it is possible
to accomplish more than we think we can as we rely on the Savior.
So here's some miracle
(and other things):
· We started meeting with a family of former
investigators this week, and they are super prepared! Their 10 year-old
son loves reading so much that he has been reading by himself in the bible that
previous missionaries left them and had questions for us about Enoch walking
with God in Gen. 5! They all accepted a baptismal date for March, and
we're helping them work towards it!
· We met with one of our newer Dominican
investigators named Jr. and had a really good lesson. I learned some
Dominican slang, and we invited him to be baptized in March, which he
accepted! He came to church on Sunday (more to come in a bit).
· One of our less-actives is one of the only
members in his family, and he decided that it's time to have us teach the rest
of his family. So this week he's going to have his wife and all of his
kids sit in on our lesson for the first time!
· We extended baptism to 3 of the kids of an
inactive member, and they all said that they really wanted to come to church
and be baptized! Later that week we went by with the branch president and
talked with the Mom about returning to church. The man she's living with
also said that he would like to be baptized!
· One of our appointments fell through, but
immediately after they canceled we received a referral, which we contacted and
turned into a new investigator!
· Jr. (from before) came to soccer on Saturday, and he brought 2 of his friends with
him! His friends turned out to be from Spain (which is super
rare...)! After soccer we invited all of them to come to church the next
day, and they all came! They stayed for all 3 hours, participated in the
classes, and loved it! So now we're teaching some Spaniards!
So yeah, it was an
amazing week! The Lord is hastening His work, and I definitely saw that
hastening happen this past week. I am so amazed at how involved He is
with us and with the people here. I know that He loves us so much.
I know that we are all here at this time because we have the strength to make
it through these difficult times and to help others around us come unto
Christ. I love this work so much, and I'm grateful every day to be a part
of it.
Have a great week!
Love,
Elder Foote
