33 New Investigators

This is going to be short because im going to talk to you tomorrow.

We watched brave for christmas zone conference. it was a good movie. a lot of people didn't like it... I did.

We had some crazy stuff happen in the mission this week. we had 28 baptisms this week which is the most since 2006. and we have 67 this month so far and we still have a week left in december. I could see us getting over 30 as a mission next week too. We probably wont hit our goal of 624 as a mission this year but we will get a lot closer than expected. its going to be a big month.

I think I mentioned last week that we got 38 new investigators as a zone. well we got 33 this week! Really good stuff.

Things are booming in our area. We had a baptism yesterday and we have 4 on date. Richard Morrow got baptized. it was kinda a surprise baptism. he was taught everything in the terrace heights ward in the other stake and we caught wind that he lived in our area and wanted to get baptized. So we had to make the transition. The sisters weren't aware that he couldn't be baptized in the terrace heights ward... So we made it work. He is in our ward now and he is awesome. His aunt and uncle and girlfriend are all members of the church. He's a great guy.

Laura will be baptized into 6th ward. We sorted all of that out. She is good to go. We had an appointment with her for Saturday and she texted us right before to ask if we could bring our service clothes. So we did. We expected it to be a small job, but she wanted us to help her slaughter her turkeys... 2 of them. So it took longer than expected and we had appointments to be to! So we left for a few minutes and went and taught a lesson then came back and finished killing the turkeys. It was bloody... I got blood all over my jeans. We helped her pluck one of them but we didn't have time to do the other. After it was all done the big turkey yielded 41 pounds of meat. Thats a big turkey. And Laura wants to serve that after her baptism because she has nothing else to do with it. So we are trying to coordinate that. I'll let you know what happens next week.

James didn't come to church but still wants to be baptized. We'll see... He has quit smoking which we thought was the biggest thing, but now his church attendance (or the lack thereof) is the problem.

Trina Mears, and Craig Hancox are on date for January 19th. Trina is doing well. We were starting from square one with her. She knew nothing about Christ or the Bible or anything when we started. Which is good and bad. But she is excited to be learning more. She texted us this morning and asked what else she should read in the Book of Mormon before we see her next because she already finished her other reading assignment. She's pretty cool. And she's our age, which makes it fun to teach her.

Craig is one that is really exciting. He was no where near being baptized a few months ago. His wife got baptized in august or sometime around there and he was talking about getting a divorce because of it. But his heart has softened a lot since then and he is thinking about getting baptized himself. We are hoping for January. He says he wants to read the whole Book of Mormon before he gets baptized, but he also said he could read it in about a week if he wanted to. So we gave him a month to read and prepare for baptism and he thought that was a good goal. It's really cool to see how far he has come. He really sees that our church is different and he wants to be a part of it.

This didn't turn out to be short. Oh well. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

Love,

Elder Paxman