Dear family and friends,
The last time I e-mailed you all I said that I was having a crummy week. Well this week that I'm e-mailing you all about was the polar opposite of the last week that I wrote about. For starters WE HAVE 5 INVESTIGATORS WITH A BAPTISMAL DATE! Oh my goodness I don't think I've ever had that many before while I've been out! I've talked about having them but now I can actually say that I've got 5 investigators with baptismal dates! I've never gotten 5 before in one week! It's pretty darn amazing! Keep the prayers coming because obviously they got answered!
The first 3 investigators came from a family that the AP's gave us. We were supposed to meet them two weeks ago but the family cancelled on us which really bummed me out. I didn't want to talk about them until we started teaching them. They're known as the Carpio family. There are three kids in their family. Two of them are baptizable ages plus the parents. Their middle child wasn't there when we taught them on Tuesday but we were able to commit both of the parents and their oldest toward September 24th. The mom, Nina, and their oldest daughter, Priscilla, seem pretty golden but the dad, Alex, doesn't seem so sure. They want to know everything before they make the commitment and Alex said that "this Restoration stuff is like telling me Mom and Dad aren't Mom and Dad". Alex grew up in the Catholic church then stopped going years and years before. We had a scattered lesson because Alex kept going off topic. We have an appointment with them tomorrow so I'd appreciate prayers that all will go well. Hopefully the baptismal calendar will work for them. Their middle daughter, Jayleen, will be there tomorrow so we'll get her a baptismal date for the 24th as well. The Carpio's didn't show up to church yesterday so we're going to have to work on that, but I get the feeling it won't happen again.
Another little bit of good news is that Eltoniesha's back! For those of you who forgot Eltoniesha was an investigator that had a baptismal date for August 6th but pulled a houdini act and disappeared for about a month. Well now she's back and we decided to help her foster mom, Gina, make Eltoniesha's bed, dresser and nightstand. It took 2 hours on Friday. Both Gina and Eltoniesha were fairly touched by that act of service. It's about time I get a positive experience when it comes to service! Eltoniesha now has a baptismal date for September 17th. We already taught her the lessons before she disappeared so we're figuring that we can review them with her and then get her dunked soon! I do worry though since Eltoniesha doesn't seem as enthusiastic now as she once was. Eltoniesha has a ton of support from the members though and her foster mom's encouraging this so we shouldn't meet too many problems with the baptism. Gina's going to be feeding us this Thursday and hopefully we'll be able to set up a bunch of appointments before her interview on the 10th. Gina and Eltoniesha finally showed up to church yesterday and they stayed the whole three hours despite the fact that Eltoniesha was sick. I think that's a good sign.
Another really cool event that happened this past week were the two appointments we had with some less actives we've been teaching: Shana and Christina. Shana and Christina are less active people that we've been teaching since I've been in this area, so about four months. Shana is in her 40's and is also the mother of Christina. They were both born and raised in the church but quickly fell away. Christina stopped going after she was baptized so she didn't know anything about what we believe in. She's also very timid and shy and wouldn't answer any of our questions. It's been hard to get them to come to church because they both work on Sundays. Then at the end of July Christina came to church! After that she started going to the YSA ward. She's been there three times now. Christina's in Flagstaff right now back in school again. Shana wanted Christina to take the lessons because she wanted Christina to know what we believe in before Christina went back to school. Anyway this was Christina's final week before she left so we wanted to end with a bang. Our first appointment was on Wednesday, when I was on exchanges with Elder Bird, who is one of my zone leaders. We couldn't get our normal fellowshippers to come with us so we got Brother James. Brother James is originally from Pakistan. He also served his mission in Pakistan and he's a very interesting individual. We told him that we were going to teach Shana and Christina about temples and he bore a POWERFUL testimony about the temple. He related the story about how it changed his dad and the temple made his family happier. Oh my goodness we could not have gotten a better fellowshipper! The Spirit was incredibly powerful in that lesson! You could totally tell it was there! Even Shana started crying as she exhorted Christina to get a limited use recommend and experience the temple (outside of the visitor's center) for herself. Christina said she'd talk with her bishop in Flagstaff about getting one. After that really amazing lesson, on the following day, we taught a short lesson on enduring to the end. Then Christina fed us with ribs that she took with her from the restaurant that she works at, Famous Dave's. Those ribs were good! Then afterwards we had homemade cake which was followed by a box of Krispy Kreme's donuts.
As I hinted at in the previous paragraph I was on exchanges with Elder Bird, my other zone leader. Elder Bird's from Idaho Falls and he's been out as long as Elder Ware. Elder Bird's an amazing missionary and he always finds ways to uplift and inspire me. We also dropped David Howell, if anyone still remembers who he is. Thank you all very much for your love and prayers. Right now I could really use prayers that our investigators will continue to stay strong and steady as they head toward their baptisms. Also the week after this one is transfer week which means that my e-mail will come to you on Tuesday instead of Monday. I should know by then if I'm getting transferred or not. I'm hoping and praying that I don't so I can continue to work on the people that the Lord has placed in our path.
Love,
Elder Boothe
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