Excerpts from last month's letters

Another week that has flown by. I'm really enjoying the mission, I can't really imagine doing anything else right now. It's such a blessing to be able to serve!

Missionary work: "Well, this week has been a pretty interesting one. Robert got baptized on Saturday. It was a pretty cool experience. There's only one person left to baptize in the L family, and that's Danielle. Danielle is definitely interested, I believe she lives in the boundaries of the Wake Forest ward but I'm not sure. The only thing that's really keeping her back is the fact that her husband doesn't really want anything to do with the church. We hope that his heart will be softened. This week was pretty surprising to us in that we were able to set two new baptismal dates with investigators. The first one is Chevy, he's read a bunch of the Book of Mormon and is really good friends with the bishop in Kinston. He asked us what he needed to do to get baptized, so we set a date with him. Then Dolores also told us she wanted to get baptized. She recently found out that she has cancer, and I think it made her really think about it. So, if all goes well she still get baptized this coming weekend! I'm pretty excited, we're working hard and enjoying it."

…As for Spanish, there's not a huge population in Dunn per say, but there are some here and there. There's a bunch in Angier and Benson, which are in our area. There are Spanish-speaking elders in our mission, maybe about 40 or so.


…Ok, well the missionaries in my district are Elder Thompson, Elder Skeem, Elder Van Orden, and Elder McDonald. They're fun, they definitely all have different personalities. I would say the most discouraging part of missionary work is doing work during the day. You don't find too many people at home and sometimes you wonder if it's worth your time. Today for P-Day we are going to go play some basketball/soccer/other sports with a bunch of other missionaries. Way fun, didn't get to do that at all in Harker's Island because we were too far away from the other missionaries.

…We worked harder this week and plan on doing better this next week. I'm just catching up on everything and trying to develop better habits. One of those includes cleanliness - we did some cleaning and the apartment looks better now. It wasn't horrible before, but it wasn't that great either. I'm also trying to do a better job in my e-mails, journal, updating the area book, planning, and lots of other things. I've got a ways to go, but I'm working on it.

… Thanks for the encouragement. I need all of it I can get! It's hard to choose the right when you're by yourself. I'm grateful to have the support that all of you give to me.

My goal for the next little while is to try and be led by the Spirit as much as possible. I've realized that when we are, the work becomes easy and miracles happen. I realize now that I screwed up with my music back home. I didn't listen to profane music, but I listened to so much music that I really wasn't sensitive to the promptings of the Spirit. I'm going to have to struggle with how much I listen to when I get back. I'm not gonna lie, listening to music is the thing that I miss the most. But anyways, I did have that insight. It's weird to look back and realize that you didn't always do everything right. I guess that's one of the blessings of being on a mission and getting a break from real life.