Hello, hope you are all having a good day and a relatively good week, mine was pretty good this week. Went on a trade-off with Elder Obeng from Nebraska/Ghana, he is a great missionary, just need to be consistent and be on to it as. Also we had a miscommunication with our WML for a meeting on Sunday morn, which we thought was Sunday evening but we're trying again in two weeks, so that will be nice.

Investigators who are working toward baptism is finishing at 6 this week so that is nice, but they are all being baptized at the end of the month and after the transfer so I am a little bit nervous that I may be transferred before I see their baptisms. . . but if that happens then I reckon that just happens. I'm also noticing that the only reason we have heaps of lessons is because we have invited heaps of people and surprisingly enough heaps say yes to being baptized. And when they do that we establish daily contact and then suddenly we are having 5 or 6 lessons a day. Still trying to involve the members a bit more to really progress the ward and build their faith more in the work and help them build up their urgency in this work, because if they aren't urgent in bringing referrals to missionaries then this work is not urgent and the work of salvation stalls because we are doing a different type of work. And since the only work right now is the work of salvation then it isn't a work driven by the Holy Ghost. D&C 31:7 "And I will establish a church by your hand;"

So fun stuff there. So we are hitting more of the mission's goals we had 20 member present lessons this week so woot, but we more or less just stumbled into those. We have a guaranteed 3 member lessons a day with daily contact with 3 of our sets so technically we are still off by one of what we should have had this week. But really there was something missing in all of them. There needs to be more than just bringing a member out with us, but maybe it actually is that simple. We are told not to teach more or less than what is given to us and really we are told to use the members, use them however you are able and then watch salvation occur. And that little salvation tid bit had gotten hold of my goat recently and when I finished yesterday and woke up today I wasn't excited for the day. I wasn't excited to be a missionary, and luckily in our District Leader Council meeting today our Zone Leaders Elder Taylor and Elder Hill showed us a video about the Atonement and missionaries. If you can find it and watch it, it is a mean video and just inspiring about moving on and difficult circumstances.

Have a good one,

Elder Long