January 23, 2012

Hey Family!

It has been a big week of changes for me. On Tuesday we had the Trainer/Trainee meeting and everyone got placed together. It was a lot of fun, and following the meeting I waved goodbye to the north half of the mission and loaded into the mission van. After about 3 hours we got down to Ft. Myers and all split up into our areas. Elder Smith is a lot of fun, and we get along great. He and I really want to work hard together, and help the area continue to grow. It's amazing, this area has so many people that are either being taught right now, or are on the verge of becoming new investigators. By the end of this week we've had one of my highest weeks for numbers of lessons taught I've ever had. It's great that we're teaching so much, and it definitely requires us to plan out our days effectively

We had a pretty great experience this week with a referral we got from mormon.org. A lady had ordered a Book of Mormon online, and so we got the text message with her name, address, and the item that she wanted. We stopped by her place and she was extremely nice. Her name is Lisa, and she's married with two daughters. We talked to her and her husband for a little bit and we bore testimony of the Book of Mormon and answered questions that she had. It turns out that Lisa has a good friend in Tennessee that is neighbors with a mormon family, and they get along really well. Well, we left them with the book after bearing testimony, and then set up a time for us to come back. The next take we got up and saw that we had a voicemail on our phone. It was Lisa, and she had heard some things about the church and had decided that she didn't want to meet up anymore. Elder Smith and I were both really disappointed, but we decided to give her a call back after saying a prayer. I talked to her and assured her that we would answer her questions, and that we would love the opportunity to finish explaining the Book of Mormon. After a little while she agreed, and said we'd be able to drop by on Sunday. We went over yesterday with an awesome couple in the ward, and everything went so well. We got to teach the entire lesson of the restoration, and they were able to feel the spirit, and they kept commenting on the fact that everything just seemed to make perfect sense. They agreed to read and pray about the things we had talked about, and Lisa is going to attend a Relief Society activity this week! Even meeting them was an answer to our prayers because we've decided that we both want the opportunity to teach a family.

Well I love you all so much! Have a great week!

Elder Kade Bartschi