Saturday, June 19, 2010

Letter to Costanza's 6/19/2010

Dear Diane, Randy, and Kids,

So how are my favorite aunt, uncle, and cousins that own a Labrador doing? Any exciting escapades with Rocky lately? It sounds like the sleepover was pretty intense! How was girls' camp? did you do anything fun? did you have to sleep in tents or did they have cabins or something for you? To answer your question, we usually play basketball or volleyball on P-days.

The work has been going very well here also. We've been seeing a lot of success bringing less-active members back to church. I should rephrase that - we aren't bringing them back, we just get them to start praying regularly again and they just about bring themselves back. (with a lot of help from the Spirit, of course) We've got a couple families that have recently come to church for the first time in many years, and a couple more who seem like they're about to come around. our investigators are doing really well, too. We've got a couple people who have baptismal dates, and others with whom we want to set dates in the next week or so. Steven is doing well, but having trouble with smoking, so we have to move his baptism from June to July. Something that was really exciting, though, is that Bro. and Sis. Hanny gave up tea and coffee without us even having to ask them to! It shows that they are truly learning to fish for themselves and not just getting fed fish by us or the members of the Ward.

I've got a brand new companion, Elder O'Donley, and he's a really good missionary. He's a little bit shy and quiet, but we're working on that. That makes him pretty easy to get along with, at least. He has a good testimony, though, so he's halfway there already. We've been having a lot of strong spiritual lessons and other experiences and witnessing miracles, so he's had a good first week of his mission!

Well, I hope everything is going well with you! Thank you so much for keeping me in your prayers - I know that it makes a difference! A couple of weeks ago we were having trouble finding new investigators, so we fasted and had everyone we met pray for us, even if they said no on the doorstep. We found a ton of people that next week. It was really cool.

I got to interview someone for baptism the other day who the sister missionaries in my district have been teaching and it was so cool to hear about how when she first walked into church she noticed that everyone was so happy - she could see a light in their faces that other people didn't have and she wanted to have that light, too. Well, she's got the light now. She's being baptized on Friday.

Love,
Elder Matthew Smith