September 21, 2009

Dear Mom and Family,
I hope things are going great for you all wherever you are currently located. So our efforts this past week for preparing our investigators for entering the waters of baptism went great! The Lord really blessed us. We went and visited or taught all our investigators but 2 or 3. It has gotten hard to contact these fellow individuals. We strived for having more member present lessons this last week. It really does help. We have seen several times when the member who attended with us to a lesson, was a great help and resource for teaching and answer questions. Not only that but the members present have been a great help with fellowshipping and even bringing toys for the little kids to play with. A good fellowshipping family is like gold. We need more of them in the stake. We met with the family who has a baptism date for the 18th of October. We had a wonderful lesson on baptism. The investigators are just like children trying to learn something new. We keep the message simple and try to ask lots of questions to see how well our teaching is coming across. What is hard is they have two children who are off the walls when it comes to our lessons. I had everything emptied out of my pockets and backpack. When we met with them this week I only brought myself. Went much better.
The work with recent converts and less active members moved forward this week. We did not specifically go see as many this week but we still met with a few less-actives and recent converts. Very fun story, Elder Jones and I went to go visit a less-active college age kid, just to see how he is doing. We had never met with him before but when we knocked, he opened the door and invited us to come right on inside. He has a strong testimony and a willing spirit but he has tied himself down with school and work. As we talked with him he expressed his feeling of how he felt like their was something missing in his life and was not sure what to do with himself. As we further talked he told us how he never served a mission and was 22 years old. He expressed how he could go on a mission if he got his life in order and just started doing what was right. We gave him the bishops number and felt the spirit testify of truth, as elder Jones and I bore our testimonies to him about how grateful that we are out here on a mission. Hopefully we have been able to help inspired him to turn his life around and get back on the path of eternal life. We have an appointment with him next week. Who knows what the Lord has in store for him. We taught the less active members about the importance of the scriptures and helped them set goals to read every day this next week.
My personal studies have been a wonderful time of feasting and learning this past week. Yes I have continues to memorize a scripture each day and daily study form the Book of Mormon. One thing that I really strived for was taking good notes at stake conference this last weekend. I took a large number of pages (4) and was blessed with inspiration on how I can be a better leader for Elder Jones, also many new ideas and plans on how I can better teach and fellowship our current investigators. I felt inspiration come many a times and am very grateful for what the Lord has blessed me with. The gospel is true. It is now or never so “be ye Diligent, thereby ye may win the prize!!!” (exclamation marks added and maybe different spelling)I love you all and hope you are doing great. You can do great things I believe in you, Love Elder Durfee