So as for news out here, the mission's going to the Oakland Temple tomorrow! I'm way excited. The next day is all mission conference which is cool as well. There are going to be 23 departing testimonies this time which is a bit above average. That also includes our mission president and all of the office staff. Crazy. Lots of changes will be taking place in the next month. As expected, the ol' companion is getting a little trunky. I can't really blame him. He's doing really well for only having two weeks left. He's still awesome and we're having a great time together but he's quickly losing his drive. Haha. He at least feels bad about it. Elder Chaichana (the one who always plays piano for me) got emergency transferred here to Santa Rosa from Benicia. So, it's pretty awesome to have an accompanist in my zone again! I was pretty excited to hear he was coming.
We had some pretty amazing experiences this week with handing out copies of the Book of Mormon. On Saturday our zone did and all-day "blitz" where all the missionaries tract in one companionship's area for a couple hours and then go to another area and do it again. We covered three areas so we went from 10am to 5pm. Lots of success and the grand total was 64 for the day. It's also kinda fun because in each area we switch who we go tracting with and we get to see a lot of different methods. Anyway, in the first area, I was getting pretty annoyed and upset over the majority of the people we talked to and the lack of success we were having. We had handed out one and it was a really weak contact and everyone else had been a little more rude than they needed to be to say the least. I was constantly praying in my head for help to stay positive and help to have faith that we'd at least hand out one more before we finished tracting. We got down to the last three houses on the street, I saw a guy watering his lawn and went to talk to him. He was interested, accepted a copy, and we talked for a little bit- it was a good conversation. The next house, my companion talked to a man at the door who was interested and took a copy. The next house was mine- the last house on the street- the contact was pretty golden and we talked about about five minutes on the doorstep. She was really friendly and excited to learn more. Awesome! The last three houses were all friendly and willing to talk AND accept copies. Prayer works.
That's about it for the week. Thanks a lot for all the mail and have a good week!
I love you all! Elder Al
