Double Digits!

Well, would ya look at that? 10 months out in the field. Ya that went by way to fast. And the end of another transfer! But we're staying here so that's cool. Having some good things happen so it'll be cool to let it all turn up. But ya, this was a 5 week transfer, next transfer is a 7 week transfer. President Anderson lands in the mission on June 28, and as soon as his feet touch the ground he receives all the keys of the mission presidency, and President Pfile loses them. That would be an interesting feeling. Immediately our loyalty will switch to President Anderson and we will be excited for him to make tons of crazy changes to the mission. I am a little worried to be honest. I hear of missions where they have to part their hair, or no board games (which would mean we would be stuck playing basketball on Pday...oh the horror) But hey, it's inspired so we gotta go with it. I just hope he doesn't make "changes for the sake of change". We'll see what happens.

Well right off the bat, one cool thing that happened this week, I guess the Alamosa Singles ward sisters were transferring an investigator over to Provo Utah, and they got permission and all the approval to call the missionaries there and make the change. Well the missionary they talked to was none other than Elder Jaffray! How about that? Small world, Big Church.

And we did manage to find 2 potential investigators off tracting yesterday. That was really neat, there was this one guy named Two Bears that we met, he was native american and at first was all like "man, I don't want white religion" and stuff and we started talking about the Book of Mormon with him, and showed him the pictures of Jesus talking to the people in America. We've been working a lot on Teach when you find, find when you teach, where you just start teaching people even if they aren't interested. It goes a little like this:

Elders: Hi, we're missionaries etc. And we're sharing a message about Jesus Christ!
Person: We're Catholic
Elders: Cool! So Jesus Christ started his church on the earth...

And you teach about a minute and a half first lesson. Really, most people would be perfectly willing to talk about stuff with you, but they don't trust you enough to let you in their house. Which is perfectly reasonable and understandable. So we just teach them on their porch and 95% of people are totally OK with that. Obviously we are tactful and we don't push people, but we do make sure they know where we are coming from. But back to Two Bears. He was cool, not totally interested but took a Book of Mormon. One thing i'd wish I'd done was shared Alma 18 with him (I think it's 18...that's the great thing about chapter headings. You just need to know the general area) Where Ammon teaches King Lamoni, and Lamoni believes in the Great Spirit and jazz. So we always evaluate and get better.

We also met this one girl who'd never talked to missionaries before and turns out to be the daughter of a part member family. She was like 15 and seemed pretty interested. So that was quite awesome. Things here are moving slowly, but they are moving. We have lots of really small miracles here. Minor things that do a lot to strengthen your testimony. Hey, it says "by small and simple things". So that's what we're doing. We have at least 7 more weeks here and we're excited to see what happens.

We went on exchanges this week and me and Elder Bailey decided to go to La Sauses (because he had a car) and while we were there, I guess some guy got sentenced to life in prison over in Antonito, and then overpowered his guard and stole a cop car. A bunch of people were warning us and telling us to get inside because they thought he'd go to La Sauses because it is in the middle of nowhere and would be a good place to hide. So that was exciting. Don't worry we're fine. He got caught shortly thereafter.

We also had something cool, we've been trying to teach this guy that's super solid but always out of town during the week. We went by his house Saturday morning, and he wasn't there, and we were bummed because his car was there, and then I decided to go check the backyard. I walked back there, didn't see him and then we heard a "hey Elders!" from the neighbors upstairs window. Because we'd been standing where we were, we got to see him at the perfect time. If we'd come back later like we wanted to do when he wasn't there the first time, he would have been gone because he got there an hour before and was only there for a tiny bit longer. So it was super good timing.

And one thing to study for the week, check out the quotes from past prophets on missionary work at the beginning of Preach my Gospel. Especially the George Albert Smith one about our exaltation being dependent upon sharing the gospel with others. Good stuff.

Well, that's all for now. Canada needs to end its postal strike.

Elder Gibb