Yay! I cannot belive that this week I will see my first Baptism. Things are going great with the ................. They are totally mormon and people in the ward that meet them for the first time keep telling us that they thought the .......................... were members already. I just can't believe that we were able to find this amazing family so quickly. The bishop of our ward (who is unbelievably good) said that if all I did was find this family on my mission it would be a great success. So that's it, I'm satisfied. I'll be coming home on a flight in a week. Ha! Tricked you. But really, this family is amazing! Kingdom builders for sure. And don't worry. I will make sure to take pictures with the family at their baptism
And guess what? The ..................... want mostly members of the ward to perform the baptisms and confirmations, which is good! However, the 8 year old girl, asked if Elder Farnsworth would baptize her and if I would confirm her. So that will be AWESOME! Speaking of .................. She needs to send a Flat Stanley to someone somewhere outside of Minnesota and so her mom asked if she could send it to my family. Sweet huh? I gave her the address to home and she should be mailing it today. So mom, expect a Flat Stanley from the McGuire's in Minnesota. There should be instructions as to what to do and then you just send it back. If you could do that it would be great! Thanks!
Pictures. I've taken some pictures and was going to try and upload them onto the computer when I realized that I left the cord at home. At least I think I did because I don't remember packing it. Could you send the cord to me? That would be great. I'm sorry that I keep on making you send packages but I guess I'm not actually that sorry because getting packages is the best! So the cord I need is in mom's office in the cupboard above the desk. The same cupboard where we keep all the thank you cards and stuff but it should be on the top shelf. You will know it is the right cord because it should have a USB connecter as well as the 3 video/audio plugs that you can put into TV's. And it should say SONY on it.This week was a week with a lot of tracting. It started out slow and we weren't really seeing any success but the Lord knew that we were working and he took care of us! This is an important principle I am learning and one that you should keep in mind MJ for your missions. ALWAYS be working. If you have 30 minutes of time open and don't know what to do, find something effective to do. Go tracting, contracting, call people and try to set up appointments, whatever. You can not afford to stop. Then what happens is that you show the Lord that he can trust you with his work and you are doing everything you can. Like I said, we did lots of tracting this week and we didn't find anyone directly from knocking on doors. But then on Saturday (Notice that it is the end of the week) we went to have dinner with an awesome member family and guess what? They gave us a potentially really solid refferral! We are going to try and work with it. And then on Sunday we were leaving an apartment complex after teaching a first lesson to a guy. As we were leaving the elevator this lady stops us and was all excited to see us. It turns out that she has tons of Mormon friends and knows a lot about the church. She was even really good friends with the family that we ate dinner with on Saturday (not the same person as the refferral though). So we helped her take her groceries back to her apartment and we talked for a bit. She told us that she liked our church but didn't really want to learn from us or anything. She was SUPER talkative and also told us that Sister ............. had told her about a young couple that just moved into her same apartment complex that was Mormon and she wanted to go meet them. It just so happens that this new couple are the ward missionaries in our ward and they have come teaching with us several times. But wait! There's more. Coincidenally, we were having dinner with them that night! Anyway, one thing led to another and we got Sister ............. to invite her to dinner. She came and we all had a very nice time. We can tell that she is very friendly to the church and knows a lot about it but just doesn't necessarily want to go to a church and so the lesson we shared wasn't anything super special. She is the type of person that will get baptized eventually, all we have to do is just help her along slowly until she is ready. So no, we didn't get a new investigator out of this experience but we did find and meet a person that we can slowly work with to help open the door to the gosel. Hopefully, she will eventually be willing to let us teach her and get baptized. Who knows! But isn't that story cool? Everything was too much of a coincidence for it to be a coincidence. The Lord takes care of you when you are willing to work!The ..................... aren't really progressing. They want to be a part of this church but wont show any commitment. The wife has been ill recently and they went out of town over the weekend so they couldn't come to church. I'm sure they'll get baptized but who knows how soon and how active they will be. That's why we're really trying to get them to have a doctrinal conversion. The Book of Mormon is SO important!Sunday was great. We had the family getting baptized at church plus several of the less actives we're working with came too. Oh it felt so nice! So relieving. Sunday's are stressful.I don't think I ever mentioned this but the missionaries before us in this area were not obedient and so this area was dying. That is why we are seeing so much success because the Lord was wanting to bless the Plymouth area but he couldn't because of the missionaries disobedience. And then when we came, all we did was follow the rules and things exploded in the area! Obedience is THE MOST important thing on a mission. It is key to success and your faith. Oh the many delicious things that you learn on a mission.A fantastic week! I'm sure in an hour I will remember all the things I forgot to say and it will not be cool. But for now, it sounds like everyone's lives are awesome. I love getting letters and emails from you! I'm sorry I don't have a ton of time to write long reply's back. Oh and thanks for the package!! It makes me so happy and my companion so jealous!Here we go for another great week :)Love,Elder Ruesch
