Man, this past week was a crazy busy one! I don't know what it is about this area, it just seems like the work is doubled and the time is halved. Which I love. It just makes time fly by even quicker which I don't love so much haha. I just hit my 18 month mark yesterday! These next 6 months are going to be my "final sprint" and I'm excited to go harder and learn more than I ever have before.
We got a nice handful of more new investigators this past week and some of them are pretty golden. One, Sister Flor, said she'll attend church sometime before we even got to introduce ourselves haha. It shows that it's true what the White Handbook says, that people recognize us as missionaries before we even approach them. I imagine it's the same for members; it's usually pretty obvious or known when someone is an active member of the church. It's our responsibility as missionaries & members to live up to our standards at all times. We had a great lesson with Flor and her daughter, although they haven't made it to church yet. Another great, first lesson we had was yesterday with 2 sisters who have member cousins. We've been searching for them for like a month and finally found them yesterday, and had a powerful lesson teaching them about God's love for them and how the gospel will bless their own lives and their family as a whole. We'll see them and sister Flor again this week. We haven't been able to return to our other golden investigators this past week since it's been so busy, but we'll definitely visit them again next time.
My highlight lesson of the week was with a recently baptized girl who's slowly becoming less-active because her parents are less-active and don't push her to go to church. We taught them about proxy baptisms and being sealed as a family in the temple. What's funny is I thought that was kind of a weird thing to teach to an 11 year old girl and her less-active mother, but Elder Frei pushed that we share it so we did. And everything turned out great! Her father just so happened to be home at that time and the Spirit helped us to share what I feel they needed to hear, and not just what we know about the temple. We focused specifically on how their family can be together forever IF they do what's necessary while here on earth. Brother & sister and their daughter took everything really well and understood that the joy we can feel in heaven with our family is different from the happiness we feel here on earth. Lately I've been thinking about that a lot and am so so grateful to be sealed with you guys forever, whether you like it or not haha.
Anyway we're on our way out. We also had a great MLC last Thursday and I got to see more mission friends again. Tomorrow is our Zone Training Meeting and I'll be teaching the zone leaders' portion alone since Elder Frei was just emergency transferred this morning. He didn't do anything wrong, he's just filling Elder Olsen's spot in another area since Elder Olsen was called to become the new assistant to President Hiatt. Crazy! Elder Olsen is my batch. But yup so it's been a pretty crazy night and morning. Elder Fernandez and I will be together until transfer day next week and then I might get another ZL companion, but we're not sure. It'll be weird working without Elder Frei since I have learned so much from him and have enjoyed being his companion for 5 weeks. I'm also excited to be in a normal companionship again though and have a feeling this week is going to be extra great.
Thank you guys for the emails! And good New Years Resolution, dad. I still haven't finished the whole D&C but I'm almost there. What's awesome is the Church History in the Fulness of Times book helps so much in understanding the sections in D&C. It kind of connects the dots between each section. I love you guys! Have a great week!
Elder Ishibashi
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