Dear family and friends,
This week we had a baptism! On Saturday Chris Brown got baptized. The baptism was well attended by the ward. The entire Wilhelm family came and there were a lot of people from the Young Single Adult ward that were there, including their ward mission leader whom I mistook for some kid who barely got out of high school. Chris Brown's parents showed up too, not only for his baptism but also for his confirmation. The baptism seemed to go by really fast. The important thing is that the Spirit was SUPER STRONG! It was an amazing feeling! Tali, Chris's girlfriend, and her mom both gave talks and they an excellent job! Chris actually bore his testimony after he got baptized which was really cool! Elder Ware couldn't make it to his confirmation because he was in a meeting with the stake president. The confirmation went by really fast too. It's great to see how much Chris has grown in the past month since we've met him. It's always cool to see our investigators grow.
Sister Darne, the less active lady that I gave my pants to so she could deliever them at church the week before Sunday, came to church again along with her daughter Delilah. Sister Darne talked about how as she was doing laundry somehow a temple garment came across the load and she felt like it was a sign that she needed to prepare herself to get ready to go into the temple. She made a goal to be ready by the time the new Phoenix temple's built. It was really awe-inspiring because Elder Ware and I have been working on them since mid-July when they stopped us over and said they were "missionary deprived". Another less active we've been teaching is an elderly gentleman by the name of Phil Schvanevelt (pronounce the v like a w). Apparently this guy's been a tough egg to crack because when we told the members that we were teaching him those who knew him were amazed! I liked that because I'm planning to use this as a way to show the members that we mean serious business and that they need to give us referrals.
As it stands right now we're being fed dinner at least 5 out of the 7 days of the week. One of our wards cover the even days (except for Sundays and Mondays) and the other ward covers the odd days. Sometimes nobody will sign up on a specific day so we'll go without a dinner at a member's house, which doesn't bother me since food doesn't mean that much to me anymore. Yesterday nobody signed up for dinner and today we don't have someone signed up either. I'm not complaining, I'm just surprised because now I've been in the routine of just going over to someone else's house that not having dinner feels weird to me. Elder Ware and I decided to follow Garit's advice about trying to get a less active/investigator over to someone else's house and it's been going good so far. We've got the Wilhelms inviting someone over (they would have done that anyway) and we've got another member family inviting the Darne's in about three weeks from now. It feels great to involve the members more in the missionary work. I guess the saying goes "If you want something done do it yourself".
I've heard several comments from people about how the dust storms and the fires are affecting me and some people have wondered why I haven't talked about them. The reason why is because for the most part I haven't been affected by them too much. I've only had to ride through one habub (it's an Arabic word for dust storms) which made riding really difficult but Elder Ware got to our appointment on time and the habub left afterwards. Since then I haven't had to worry about dust storms. There've been no fires anywhere near me, they're down in Mesa from what I've heard. Once July hit we've been in the "monsoon" season. That means that the humidity increases and sudden bursts of lightning and minor amounts of rain happen. Nothing serious has happened yet. Recently the temperature's gone back up but at this point I don't really care one way or the other.
Elder Ware and I could really use some help getting the member's more active in missionary work. Please pray that such opportunities will happen and that we'll be able to recognize them. We could also use some prayers to find more people. I love you all and I am very grateful for my awesome family.
Love,
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