Goals and GAs

Hey guys! 

This week has been bombin'!  We finally hit our transfer long goal of 20 lessons in one week, and just in time because that was the last week of the transfer. We've been finding lots of new people to teach, and getting great referrals from members. Best of all I'm staying in Providence for another transfer! I'm really starting to like this area, it just took me a little while to adjust. Elder Snyder will also be staying here with me, which I'm pretty happy about because we've been seeing a lot of success together as of late. I also went on exchange with the zone leaders this week and got to see how they're running their area in Pineville. (It's nothing like Prineville.) They gave me a ton of great ideas for how I can build Providence and it was super nice to see a model of how Providence should start looking. I was really impressed with how they do member missionary work, so that will be a focus of mine. The next day I got a phone call from President Alexander asking me to serve as the new District Leader in our district. So that's gonna be a ton more responsibility, but I'm excited to serve. 

We had a really good lesson with one of our investigators this week named Steve. He finally understood the apostasy and the priesthood which is important for understanding the need for a restoration. It was really cool to finally see things click in his head. Now he's reading the Book of Mormon with real intent because he actually gets why it's important! Such a great lesson, and better yet we had a member out with us who's gonna be a great fellowshiper for Steve. We also took a recent convert named Abel out teaching and he walked up to this guy and they started talking to each other in Spanish for like 5 mins and then Abel looked at us and said: 'Can you guys come teach him on Friday?' Luckily the guy speaks English but, man, would Spanish help me be a better missionary. 

The Elder Zwick conference was great! I got to see Elder Hampshire, who's also a district leader, and a lot of other missionaries I've served with. The training was amazing, Elder Zwick is a Seventy and was on the missionary board when they made Preach My Gosepl. He shared a lot of cool stuff about how they made PMG. The 9 years it took to fully create it were the only 9 years in church history that no one from the Quorum of the 12 or the presidency died and had to be replaced. He talked about how both Maxwell and Joseph B. Wirthlin really should have died during that time but Heavenly Father kept them because they needed to write certain parts of Preach My Gospel. (Wirthlin was pronounced dead twice and still lived on.) He also shared some really neat things from his notes he took in a meeting a few days back with the Quorum of the Twelve and a few of the other Seventy. He said they meet every Thursday and discuss the needs of the church and then take the sacrament and that he's been invited quite a few times. Also when I was in the bathroom during the break he came in and starting using the urinal next to mine and asked me what I was learning. So yeah...I had a conversation with a general authority while peeing in a urinal.  

Thanks so much for writing me every week, it really means a lot. 

I love you guys!