Week 62

Hey there y'all! It's been another wonderful week here in Texas! It's been a good one and a hard one. We don't have a lot of investigators right now and even fewer are progressing. It's pretty difficult but the Lord will provide and we are moving forward.

This week we saw Lara's parents, Sarah and Gary. Gary is pretty analytical and it will likely be a while before he gets baptized, but I'm sure he will get there eventually. Sarah is into it more than Gary is but she isn't as gung-ho as Lara is. We committed her to be baptized on September 18th, but she said that is too soon, that she needs to read and study more. Lara stepped in and was perfect and said, "Pretend that you want to know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God by then and if you get that answer, then get baptized then." It was sweet and Sarah said she would at least do that. It might be a little slower with her right now, but she will definitely get baptized somewhere in the near future.

We are also teaching a man named Luis. He is Hispanic and living with a member named Tiffany. Luis is pretty solid and he comes to church, reads, prays, and keeps his commitments. The only problem is that he and Tiffany are living together but aren't married, and there is a concern that if they do get married, there will be a lot of expenses (Tiffany has a child that goes to a daycare and she is getting help right now because she's a single mom going to school). So it's either get married or stop living together or Luis can't get baptized. Sadly we've been talking to them about it for the past couple of weeks but they haven't done much, so we will have to turn them over to the ward if they don't progress soon.

We had a pretty sweet miracle last week; we found a family of five! Stacy (mom), Ladericka (18), Dericka (17), Derick (15), and Daisha (9). They are African-American and we had a really powerful lesson with them about prayer and Stacy said a prayer at the end of it! Sadly they didn't keep their return appointment, so we will try to meet with them again, but if they don't commit and won't do anything, then we will sadly have to move on

Other than that there isn't much going on. There's a promise by Elder Ballard that if we (as missionaries) each contact ten new people every day, then our baptisms will double and we will always be teaching. So basically we try to get 140 contacts each week. That's a lot of people, but Elder Mosca and I did it this week, and we are hoping to be able to do it every week while we are together so we can baptize!

I love you all and hope y'all have a great week!!


Love,

Elder Grondel


P.S. This is one of the biggest churches I've seen here in Texas, and sadly it's not the best picture. It's kiddie corner to our meetinghouse in Plano. It's called Prestonwood Baptist Church, but we like to call it the Baptidome or Six Flags over Jesus. It comes complete with coffee shop, restaurants, shopping center, athletic complex, and of course, the worship center, capacity: 20,000. I have yet to see a modern church bigger than this.