March 10, 2010

Hola!
This week was another great week. It was a wonderful experience to be able to go to the temple on Saturday. We road down to the temple with a member family that we love. There isn't much scenery on the way other than wheat fields. It was about a 2.25 hour drive south to Cardston. We were able to see some mountains from the temple that were in Montana. So, I can say that I saw U.S. soil this week. We were able to go through a session in Spanish which was a neat experience. I was worried that it would be hard to understand, but it wasn't as bad as I thought. There ended up being 117 people in the session which I heard afterwards was breaking fire code. So, we officially broke the law in the temple. The temple was very beautiful and it was great to be present with the members that we work with. A recent convert family was able to be sealed afterwards as well. The spirit carried into the fast and testimony meeting on Sunday at church as well which was great for many of the non members that were at church on Sunday.
The mission had 17 baptisms the first week of March, which was equal to how many we had total in the month of February. From past numbers and statistics, the Assistants just sent an email saying that we're projected at about 85 baptisms right now in the month. There's more baptisimal dates than that right now, but I assume it takes into account how many dates historically drop or something. But, it really is wonderful news. The member missionary work in the mission is really picking up and catching fire and the missionaries in the mission have never worked harder. I think the missionary department has decided to come and figure out what's going on because they are here this week as well going on exchanges and evaluating missionaries. There's a special training with the people from Salt Lake tomorrow with some of the mission too.
We've really been trying to focus our studies on the talks that we've been asked to study in anticipation for the meeting this Saturday with Elder Bednar. We have to meet at 4:30 AM to be in Lethbridge by 7:30 for the conference. I assume that it may be a once in a lifetime experience and so we have been trying to approach it in prayer and fasting. One of the talks is about asking in faith and the roal of faith in our daily prayers. He teaches that a faithful prayer leads to asking for strength and help but then continuing that prayer and putting it into action in our lives through consecrated work. He shares an example of how sometimes members may pray for the missionaries or ask the Lord to help the missionaries. But, if they really understood the principle of prayer, faith, and action, they'd pray for the strength to find people themselves for the missionaries and then go to work inviting people. Our prayers have taken on a different role as we apply that principle to our investigators as well. We've been trying to pray for more specific guidance of the things that we can specifically do to help the investigators progress and for the strength to carry those plans out.
The members continue to help us out. There were 3 people at church on Sunday that members had invited and brought to church that we weren't expecting. The weather has also gotten a little warmer and we've felt the need to get out and walk so that we could make ourselves available to talk to everyone on the streets. The Lord has put several people in our path. On afternoon, we were walking on a back street on the edge of a neighborhood and were a little lost, but we saw a lady with two children a ways off. I looked to Elder Galloway and asked him if we should go talk to her. At that time, she yelled something to her small son in spanish and we knew that we should go talk to her. We were able to schedule an appointment with her. She had attended church a couple years ago in Toronto and had met with missionaries before as well. It really was a wonderful miracle.
Right now, there's 6 baptisimal dates for March in the ward, and so the work continues to progress. Elder Galloway and I have pretty much all new investigators that we're really trying to help progress. Our current struggle is helping them see the need and benefit of meeting with us more than once a week. We've been praying hard for direction in what we can do to establish that with a lot of our new investigators.
I'm glad to hear that your lives are all going well! I love you all!
Con AMor,
Elder Dunlap