Week 31 - Hola Amigos!

November 16, 2009

Hi my favorite family!!
How is everything going at home? Hope all is good. Is it staying warm for you? Yesterday was a VERY nice day here in Pennsylvania. I actually went out tracting in just a short sleeve shirt and I was fine! That probably won't be lasting very long though. The computer system is being extremely slow today, so I'm sorry that I can't write all of you individually this week. I actually couldn't read Kelsey's email either! Next week, hopefully I can read two from you! :)
This week has been pretty good. First some very good news, at least for me anyway. We had zone conference on Thursday and I told you that some things were going to be changing. Well I'm loving these changes! We are now no longer counting how much tracting time we've done or how many people we talk to. We are now just focusing on increasing our number of people set with baptism dates, progressing investigators, and investigators at sacrament meeting. I think this is a great focus because it really bugged me before that we had to count exactly how much time we've tracted and how many people we've talked to. That's not really what we should be focusing on, we should be focusing on helping people progress towards baptism and making and keeping commitments. Of course I understand that finding and sharing the gospel with people is important, but it now gives me a new sense of excitement. I felt like before I was just doing it because if I didn't, our leaders were going to get on our cases and make us feel bad. Now I can go out and tract because I really, really want to find someone who is ready to hear the gospel. I don't know if that makes any sense, but I'm stoked about it!
Two quick stories of the week.....Sis Ferguson and I were tracting a couple days ago and we ran into one of the general managers at CiCi's Pizza. Now you have to understand that Cici's pizza is in a central location where ALL the missionaries in the area go. So this guy see's us A LOT! haha. At first we didn't recognize him but once we remembered, he opened up to us a lot. He told us of some things that have been going on in his life right now and that it was such a miracle that we showed up right then. Missionaries have never really shared the gospel with him before but we shared the whole message of the restoration with him and gave him a Book of Mormon. In return, he gave us a HUGE stack of coupons to Cici's pizza for free lunch buffet!!!!! Sweet huh????? We'll follow up when we see him at Cici's :) Yummy.
We also got a referrel for a girl who actually called up the church building so she could learn more. We contacted her and set up an appointment to meet her at the church building. Unfortunately she didn't show up (we'll have to try to contact her again) BUT it was a blessing that we were there. Another ward was having a clothes drive/clothes exchange. Greg pushed back his baptism because he didn't have nice clothes to wear to church. SO, we found him a whole bunch of nice shirts and nice pants and they fit him!!! Maybe he'll be ready to move his baptism back up :)
That's all for this week. Can't wait to hear from all of you next week! Transfers are coming up again on Dec. 1st, so keep praying for me that I'll stay in Lititz next transfer. I love it here and I want to be able to be there for Greg's baptism! (p.s. amanda's baptism was this past friday!!!!!) Love you all and hope you have a fantastic week! Stay strong!
Love, Holly