English too

Dear Family,

That's cool that you now have a new Avalon. Is it blue? Oh, I bet it is. What's gonna be the plan with it when I get back?

That's amazing that it's cheaper to fly becky back to utah to do orthodontia. It must be very expensive there... almost like here. It costs a lot more than the $400 a month to keep us supported, but luckily there are people in south america who don't need quite that much money so it evens out. Our apartment alone is like $1200 a month for us 4 missionaries. They're trying to move us into members homes if possible.

I got your letter today; I also got a letter from a lady in the ward. I appreciate her thought in sending a letter and the ward newsletters.

Happy birthday mom! I hope it was a good one! I wish I could have called you or something, but it was just business as usual... actually, yesterday was a really GOOD day for proselyting. We followed up with some potential investigators, and got our first appointment on thursday with one of them named Ling Cao; got in a door, taught a first discussion, and set up another appointment with Wu Lai, who seemed very open to it; got in a door of someone elkington used to know, and as Elkington talked to her (Grace is her name) in english, bearing his testimony and just chitchatting and what not, I taught her mom from China a first discussion. She's a funny lady, but not really interested; she wants to learn english first, she says. Oh, and yesterday morning we also met with Emily again, and here's the big news from this week: She has a baptismal date. Yep! It's set for November 13th. It's not exactly the most solid date ever set, but she's working on preparing herself for that day and hoping she can keep reading and receive a spiritual confirmation. So, yesterday was a pretty positive day, teaching 3 lessons and getting 3 more appointments, two with potential investigators, one which I think has really good potential. But numbers don't matter as much as that we got to see, teach, and help a lot of people yesterday.

But there are also some more exciting things that happened this week. The two new good potentials I wrote about last week that came to church -- well, they're now both officially investigators, bumping our total up to a more comfortable 3. We met with both Mrs. Ma and Mrs. Yan after church in the relief society room with 3 convert fellowshippers (Ronald, Ronald's Mom, and Sister Ding). We had the first of what I guess is going to be a weekly appointment, and for this one, we just all went around the circle and introduced ourselves. The members told their conversion stories, we missionaries told why we're on missions, and Mrs. Yan and Mrs. Ma told about their contact with the church. Mrs. Yan says she has had all the lessons and wants to progress, slowly, towards baptism cause she has some questions. Mrs. Ma says she wants to be baptized by her brother in law when she gets back to beijing in 4-5 months, and wants us to teach her all she needs to know to get baptized. Talk about a golden investigator! She's pretty old (about 70) but very nice and the members really like her. So, we are teaching more people now and that's very exciting.

Another bit of good news from this week is that we actually got our new English ward. It is Penasquitos 3rd ward, and we took it over from the sisters; yesterday we met with them and they handed us over the area book and gave us a 3 hour briefing on the area. So, as a consequence, we'll now have dinners 5 times a week instead of 1, we'll have exchanges most nights so we can do twice the work, and we have 2 investigators we're inheriting, plus some good potentials. So we're going to be supported by that ward too. The support of missionary work out here is a LOT different than I expected, it's much different than in utah. We meet with the bishop/branch president weekly, the ward/branch mission leaders twice weekly, the ward missionaries actually DO things like go on exchanges, etc. It's pretty cool and inspiring. Once this week, we were out at Farrell's for dinner with the Bradshaws, and some members came up to us and gave us $20 to use for food sometime. So, we got a double food help in one night. This old man in the stake named brother bardsley gives us more leftover bread than we could ever use every week, and that helps too. So now our time of fruitless finding efforts is over - we have people to teach, and although we still need to use much time finding, it feels like we have some good leads to use like it should be.

Well, that's all my time that I have. I'll write again next week. Keep the letters coming; I love you all.

Love,
Elder Myers