Week 14

Hey Y'all!! It's been another week in Texas!! The weather has started to cool off here and it is beautiful! It's so nice to not be standing in 100 degree weather with tons of humidity anymore.

This week really didn't go much better than last week. It was about the same, minus the fact Elder Hatfield wasn't sick this week. We had lots of appointments set up again, but many of them canceled. Same as last time, I'll just go over the highlights.

Monday and Tuesday weren't very good. Lots of drop-bys and tracting to little success. Wednesday went a lot better. We were able to pick up two new investigators!! We got a media referral (basically someone saw a commercial and wanted something) and the person (Nicole) requested a missionary visit. We went over that night and taught her and her mother, Cathy, a little bit of the restoration, and they wanted to know more! It was really great and a blessing to get some new investigators. We had an appointment set up with them tonite, but something came up and they won't be able to meet with us. We're hoping though. We also saw Daniel, who is doing well but we are still waiting for Mom's permission to baptize him. We went and saw a member of the ward named Nico who is pregnant with twins and as a result of such has been on bed rest for the past 25 or so weeks. It was really nice to see her because she had moved from the bed to the couch and was a lot more active. She was really happy to see us and we were more than happy to see her. Her husband isn't a member, and he may show interest soon. It will be interesting to see how that will progress.

Thursday we went on exchanges with the Zone leaders, Elder Lusk and Elder Patterson, who are serving in the Frisco 1st and 3rd ward. Elder Patterson came here and Elder Hatfield went there. Elder Patterson has only been out about 9 months but is a way awesome missionary and is already a great leader. The zone itself is pretty young (besides Elder Heywood, who's been out about 20 months, and the next oldest has only been out 14) but it's a good zone as well and hopefully good things will happen. That day, Elder Patterson and I did a lot of tracting and drop-bys to--you guessed it--no success.

The next day I felt like my prayers had been answered. We finally got into a door!! I felt impressed that we needed to go to a particular street to begin tracting and the first door we got to, a man named David let us in!! We taught him the Restoration and he's committed to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it!! I was so happy we were finally able to get in and teach someone after it seemed like such a long time since it had happened. I was so happy I was able to listen to the Spirit and allow him to guide us where we needed to go.

Saturday, we were supposed to have an appointment with Christian and he wasn't there again!! I really want to teach him, but it's way frustrating when he isn't there. Hopefully he'll be able to find time to see us and we can start seeing him regularly again. Later that day, we went and saw Korea and taught him another new member lesson. He is doing well and we think (and hope) he will remain strong in the church for the rest of his life.

We saw Mendi the next day, and we would have had a baptismal date with her, but it's been a hectic week for her and so she didn't get the chance to sit down and think about it. She is still doing great, though, so I'm not all that worried.

J.J. Kruzel has a baptismal date!! I called his mom the other night, and they figured out when they were going to do it! He should be baptized on October 17, and then confirmed the next day in church. We're really excited for him and his little brother, Hayden, who's also going to be baptized (Hayden is 8)! So it should be a great weekend when that happens.

Anyways, I think that's it from me! I hope all is going well for all of you!

Elder Grondel