Letter #3

Hey, so I will probably be on for a little while longer, since I still have to write my letter to the Mission President, so if you have any burning questions, send them fast, and I'll answer them now :)

Okay, so I'm going to do my best to cover everything from this week, but it feels like so much happened this week, but it all went so fast, and I don't know what you heard from Kelly, but she and Kimmy got most of the good stuff from this week already. I had my first baptism this week. First three baptisms, actually. Elder Kearney and I baptized 3 grandchildren of an active sister in our ward. Their parents are less active, so they were not baptized at 8, but they were still 9, 11, and 13, so they were really easy to teach, and wanted to be baptized and everything. They got baptized on Thursday, and it was a pretty small event. It was pretty much only the family there, but it was still pretty great. We had to show up 2 hours early to fill up the font, and so we were at the church for a total of 4 hours that day. We got special permission to confirm them on the same day too, so I confirmed one of the kids. And then we got a bunch of extra juice and cookies afterward, that we gave to one of our investigators, because we already had too much food at the apartment. We made it a celebration for him not smoking for a day and a half at that point. We need him to stop smoking for 5 days in a row to get baptized, and then he's pretty much ready too.

Kelly told you about Sonja (Sonya?)? (halfway through writing this letter, I realized that you meant Sanjay.) I think I've met like 5 Sonjas this week, and I don't know which one you're talking about, but the big one that we had happen to us was yesterday, there was someone named Sonja that showed up in our ward. I didn't get around to talking to her, because there are just so many people that I don't know yet, and she looked like a pretty active member. Well, anyway, that evening, we had a dinner apointment with the Petersons, and in the middle of it, Brother Peterson asks if we met this Sonja, and I remembered what she looked like, but I didn't actually talk to her. So he said that he saw her wandering around, and so he went up to her, and she said that she didn't know where she was going. So he pointed her to Sunday School, and got to know her a little bit. She had the missionary discussions in California a couple of years ago, and wanted to get baptized, but stuff just came up, and she wasn't able to, but now she's living here, and she made it out to church, and she really wants to get baptized still, and she's going to keep coming to church every Sunday and everything, but she wants the discussions again, and so we're going to get to teach her soon, and get her baptized. So we're super excited about that. Right after he was telling us all of that, I got a text from the Ward Mission Leader that said, "Call me after your dinner apointment. I have good news :)" And apparently, he heard about the same person, and so we're all so excited for her. And we're excited for us too, because we're pretty much out of people in our regular teaching pool, so it's just pretty awesome.

The other morning, we ran the Narrows Bridge. That was pretty fun. It is a mile in each direction, but my companion is not much of a runner, and it was all windy, so I didn't want to be waiting at the end all by myself for forever, so I walked about half of the way.

I feel kinda stupid, but that blog address that I gave you is thebeautifulwa-tac.blogspot.com , not what I sent you with the @ symbol.

So some of the people that have been out for about 7 weeks now are actually training new missionaries. I hope I'm not a trainer this next transfer, because I do not feel ready for that at all.

Oh, yeah, and tell Dad thanks for his letter. I loved that talk he sent. It was super good. We've been talking a ton about faith here, and how it is a principle of belief, and principle of action, and a principle of power. Someone at the MTC defined a miracle as the natural outcome of exercising faith, or something along those lines. And that's a super cool way to think about it, because we see miracles all the time, especially here in the WA-TAC. Lots of really cool ones too. But when we are on the Lord's errand, we should expect to have miracles. And I think I had some other thoughts on faith too, but I can't think of any right now.

Okay, this letter feels pathetically short, but I can't think of much else to say... I love you all, and hope you are doing well!