So this week was quite good. We had a baptism. That always makes it good. And we have a new investigator with a baptismal date. So our escalator keeps on moving. Yay!
So a milestone today: Today marks 1 year of being in the field! How crazy is that? I totaled up my stats for the first year, so here, take a look at em!
Member Present Lessons: 161
Total Lessons Taught: 243
Less Active Lessons: 169
Hours Tracted: 396
Street Contacts: 1151
New Investigators: 34
So there ya go. Not to brag or anything, to be honest I don't think they are anything special, just numbers. My tracting seems pretty low, but I haven't tracted a lot in Sanford so that's probably dropped it a little. Overall, not bad. I've had about 12 baptisms on my mission so far (counting people that I taught/found that got baptized after I left) so it's about 1 out of every 3 new investigators gets baptized. Not too shabby. Anywho, thought you might get a kick out of those.
And we do stats differently now, for the last few weeks we don't count tracting or contacting as stats and Less Actives are grouped in with "Total Lessons" in addition to Member Role Plays and such. So I probably won't bother counting hours of tracting for the rest of my mission. So that's all you get!
Probably the big thing of the week for me: I didn't mention last Monday that I got an interesting email. One from the Assistants. I may or may not have mentioned a couple weeks ago Elder Palmer getting a similar email. Basically, I got invited to a "Train The Trainers" meeting. Soooo....I'm training next transfer. Eeesh. Which means, under the new 3 month training program, If I stay here next transfer (which is very likely) Then I'll be in Sanford until December, basically 7.5 months. Woo! The only sad thing is transfers are December 13th, so I'm guessing that's when I'll leave and be in a new area for Christmas. Which would be sad, as I've made some great friends here. So hopefully my new boy doesn't go home in the MTC or anything like that, and I'm actually pretty excited, though it'll be sad to leave Elder Hakes, because we get along super well he's a good hard worker, but change is always good. ("boy" refers to new missionary. The tradition of the mission dictates that he will be henceforth known as my "son" and I will be his "father"...I know it sounds weird. Remember our ways are not your ways.)
The meeting was cool. We went up to Springs on Tuesday night. I wanted to stay with Elder Palmer in the biggest apartment of the mission and he has 2 extra beds and a couch and stuff. But I got overruled in the car and we stayed with the Springs Zone Leaders. I figured it would be pretty accountable (obedient) but, lets just say it wasn't. I wasn't too impressed with the way they did things. In a nutshell I got no sleep and woke up feeling sick the next morning (I had been sick that day, but their antics kept me up and aggravated it). It was pretty bad because my sinuses were just clogged and my ears were popping, so driving up to 7800 feet to get back home was quite painful. But the meeting was good, a lot to take in and it's going to be an exciting 3 months! I noticed during the meeting (on wednesday) that on that same day all the new missionaries that would be coming to our mission were going to the MTC. So it was like a mind link or something. Ok maybe not, but still cool to think about. We're all getting trained at the same time!
One funny part about the meeting was we role played companionship study. And as part of comp study we do role plays. So we did a role play in a role play. I was trying to find a way to turn it into a role play within a role play within a role play. Maybe in the lesson, pretend to role play with an investigator (been done before). It was like the movie Inception, you know the whole dream within a dream thing? We were getting lost on the second level....
Alright enough of that
So our baptism was awesome! We had 2 investigators there, John and Tony! And speaking of John he's got a baptismal date for the 22nd of October when his wife gets off vacation, and he's super solid and excited for it. He had like an open house thing and met a ton of members and is telling everyone about it! I guess he's been working with missionaries for years, but never came to church until me and Elder Palmer got in. I don't know what we did different, but I guess just the right time. And Tony is up to Enos in the book of Mormon and loving it, but it's hard to shake off the traditions of his fathers. We keep working with him, one of these days he'll come around. He is 83 and almost became a priest. And we're pretty sure he was in the Mafia. He's Italian and from Boston...well it's kinda a joke, but there are some funny things....anywho.
And we got asked to give talks in Church next week, which interestingly enough will be the first talk I've ever given on my mission. I don't know how I've dodged the bullet for so long, but I guess here goes. And it's the first time missionaries have given talks in Sanford for a couple years. So hopefully we don't mess up. I'm speaking on missionary work, but being careful to be encouraging not chastising. The members have done a good job already of missionary work.
Well, that's all! Yeehaw!
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