Hola.
Hope all is going well. I'm sure everyone is excited for the election to be over tonight. We are. Not that anyone is being belligerent or anything, but because the "are you voting for Romney??" questions are getting old.
Anyway, last week was pretty good. It was great to see one guy that we reactivated ask when there would be a temple prep class, and another lady there in church. She hasn't missed a day in over a month and is doing very well. It really is cool when you get to reactivate people. I hope they can get to the temple sometime soon, that would be really cool. It's been awesome to be able to help bring people back to church. The rescue really is important, and these people that have come back have been such a blessing in my life.
Today was Zone Training Meeting. It's a monthly meeting with the whole zone. Normally it is the zone leaderS that handle it, but it's just me, so I was on my own. It worked out really well. We talked about quickening our pace. There will be a ton of new missionaries coming in the first two months of next year, and we need stuff for them to do. We have so many units, not everyone English one will have two sets of missionaries, but some will. In our zone, I could see 3 extra companionships coming in. That would be really cool.
This past week we made some strides with a few of our investigators. The Russell's committed to come to church, but they got sick. Sad Face. But tomorrow we have a church tour scheduled with them, so that would be huge. We need to start moving more with them. Getting them to church is a huge priority this week. With Bev, she actually committed to come to church! This week that is. She had her granddaughter over night this past Sunday. It's no small thing that Bev has committed. She is the kind of person that won't commit very easily, but when she does, she follows through with it. We have an appointment with her on Thursday. We also have an appointment tomorrow with one of Samson's friends who came to church a few weeks ago. I feel like we do a lot of work through Samson, so he'll be missed when he leaves on his mission on December 12th.
This past Sunday, Elijah got up to bear his testimony. We got to sacrament late, because we had our stake missionary correlation meeting with the stake president, but we were just in time to see Elijah get up and share his testimony. He got up and expressed appreciation for Samson and his family and what an example they were to him and then talked about how he wants to be like Samson when he goes out on his mission. It was awesome. Elijah is a junior now, but he wants to go on his mission. He's still going to seminary and everything. He's awesome.
Speaking of seminary, the whole zone is going to seminary tomorrow. Our high councilor over missionary work, Brother Wirthlin, and us are giving a presentation and we are inviting every student to hand out a copy of the Book of Mormon before the end of the year. We've got five cases of BOMs in our apartment for it. Brother Wirthlin dreamed it up, and I think it is a great idea, especially with all the youth that have been taught (and baptized) in the last few months. We have the best stake leaders here.
Thanks for all the love an support.
Have a good week.
-Elder James Richards