Hello everyone! I love you!Summer is pretty much over! It sure doesn't feel like it though here in sunny southern California!
Elder Packer came to Zone Conference, which of course was pretty neat. He interviewed Elder Franson (among other missionaries semi randomly selected by President Baker) He talked a lot about the trainings in general and the Spirit in the work/revelation and how missionaries need to work efficiently instead of "the brute force technique" of just finding more people to get more baptisms- apparently they did a world wide study that showed that to double baptisms you needed to double new investigators but they also found if you work smarter (with teaching etc) you don't have to have double new investigators to 4x the baptisms... (I don't really have enough time to explain that in a better way...)
Investigators:
-We are now just starting to work with Sergio's mom. We have recently made a better relationship with her. She comes from a different religion from Cuba, originally from Africa, where they worship spirits, so that might be a little interesting. She has recently opened up and expressed a desire to learn what her son learned, go to church and without much direction from us- said she wanted to be baptized. We haven't had a formal sit down lesson with her yet but she'll have a date after tonight's lesson!
-Oscar is the sibling of a member in the ward. He passed a baptismal interview when Elder Webber was here but then he flaked out and fell of the face of the earth. We contacted him my first couple of days in this area but didn't have much success (besides three lessons and him going to church once) We had one amazing lesson with him and we thought we had gotten to the bottom of his concern with baptism (which was his parents, who are fine with him being baptized it turns out) but he didn't come to church and he is back to not following through with return appointments and commitments (well he only didn't keep one but we cant contact him again...) She is hard to understand because Cuban's talk super fast with a thick accent...
-We are having the same problem with contacting another woman and her kid that we tracted into a month ago... Kind of sad how people fall through the cracks for various reasons...
Recent Converts:
-Sergio is doing well with his repentance process (he had sex with a drunk girl at a party on "accident" according to him- she snuck up on him basically when he was asleep and he succumbed to temptation) (he met with the bishop and he is going to meet with him every three weeks- so the silver lining is that he will have a good relationship with the bishop...) He didn't come to church though this past week because his mom said he was sick. We are meeting with him tonight though. It is sad because the people around here are exposed to drugs, drinking, crazy parties, sex etc so young. The high school has a lot of problems from what we here (more than the average high shcool I mean...) The girls especially are so desperate, Sergio was telling us how a lot of them send them naked pictures of themselves even without the guys asking. It is sad that people think they need to go that rout for affection/attention...
-Jamson Chuc is doing well too.
Less-Actives:
-Still working with the Archundias (Sergio's neighbors), they haven't come to church in two weeks...
-We were very happy that Cesar Ferman decided to go to church this past Sunday after going over to his house that morning. His siblings (most of them are recent converts...) will hopefully follow in the Sundays to come... There is a lot of potential in that part member family and their two friends that are always over...
-We are in the process of prioritizing the work and deciding which Less Actives need a weekly visit (if that) and who just needs a phone call reminder to go to church. We are discovering that this area cant support finding, investigators, recent recent converts and the amount of less active work that was going on before...
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Love!
Elder Myers
