More Fire!

We got to see some cool miracles this past week. The first one was when the mission set a goal to set 44 baptismal dates this past Saturday! My companion and I were determined to be a part of it and set a baptismal date with some people! We had some great plans set for the day, and a lot of the people that we thought we'd probably have the most success with, we were seeing in the morning and right after lunch. So we went out and got to work on Saturday. One by one, each visit fell through. Many of the people were home, but were just ignoring us, which was pretty disappointing. Eventually it was the afternoon, we were behind schedule on our plans, and we hadn't even been let inside a single house yet. Even door knocking wasn't going as well as it usually did. Next on the list was an investigator that we hadn't seen in a while, but that my companion had felt inspired to visit that morning. So we went and visited him, and he ended up letting us in! We had a great conversion with him and baptism was brought up - he said that it was something that he wanted for his kids, and for himself! So we set a date with him, giving him about 2 months to prepare for it. At the end of the mission, as a mission, we set ... I think 54 baptismal dates!

Oh and we also mowed a lawn this past week. We had mowed it a couple months ago. Last time, this lawn was like a forest - it took two different visits to completely mow all the grass, and destroy all those weeds. Recently, we got a text saying that this person had an inspection coming up, and wanted us to mow her lawn again... and we had a feeling that now mowing had been done since we last came, which meant it probably all grew back. So this time, we got another set of elders to come, and a member. We had 2 lawn mowers, 2 whipper snippers/weed wackers, and 1 ... lawn mower/whipper snipper combination, I like to call it the weed destroyer. All 5 of us went to work and absolutely destroyed that lawn! What took probably around 5 hours last time took 45 minutes this time! We weren't taking any chances and under-estimating the project again. Afterwards, hit up McDonalds and rejoiced in our success. D&C 4: "Now behold, the field is ... overgrown ... past to harvest. And harvest we did."

Sorry, door knocking was more bland than usual, so no cool experiences to share this time around.

So in last week's email I think I mentioned that we went to a fireside, where some motivation speakers just spit fire - it was pretty cool. Well, this past week, we had a zone conference, and Brother Hymas, who spoke at the fireside, came and spoke to us! Once again, more fire! It was awesome. Made us feel chastised at times I guess, which was good, because it made us want to improve! At least that's how I felt. Elder Holland said in one of his talks that sometimes he likes to speak with a bit of heat, "just enough to singe the eyebrows", and that's kinda what 's needed at times. Well, this past conference, our eyebrows were singed by brother Hymas. It was awesome, I wish I could have recorded his speech/talk! The main message was being a proactive missionary vs a reactive missionary. What does that mean? Sometimes missionaries wait for things to happen. They wait to be approached by the golden investigator, they wait for great opportunities to come to them. Yet a proactive missionary seeks them out, works for them, finds them. They're putting themselves out there, getting out of their comfort zones, to find success. And I guess that applies to all of us, missionaries or not!

Well, thanks everyone for your love and support!

Elder Ho