June 23rd, 2009 (Email)

Hey everybody!
Things are starting to get busier now that our teaching pool has sky-rocketed. We found 13 new investigators last week and three people said they'd prepare themselves to be baptized. We received a referral to go visit a guy named Jessie Rodriguez. He called the MTC Referral Center to receive the Finding Faith In Christ DVD so we delivered that to him. He was really excited to meet with us and he absorbed the Restoration lesson pretty well. He said he'd prepare himself to be baptized July 11th. That happened on Thursday.
On Friday we taught a new investigator named Shinelle Bosse. We brought a member with us to that appointment and we taught her about the Restoration too. Her "husband" is a member who was a gangbanger not too long ago. Shinelle said she'd prepare herself to be baptized August 1st. The reason we pushed that date back that long is because she and her "husband" need to get married first. There's also some Word of Wisdom stuff to work out. But we had another lesson with the Bosses yesterday and we brought Bishop Jensen, our Ward Mission Leader with us and they committed to live the Law of Chastity and the Word of Wisdom so who knows? Maybe Shinelle will be prepared earlier than August.
On Saturday we were knocking and we found a new spanish-speaking investigator named Jesus (Spanish name- pronounced "Hey-Seuss") while we were knocking in Hawaiian Gardens and he let us into his house immediately and we tuaght him the Restoration lesson. We invited him to be baptized July 18th and he said he'd prepare himself for that date!
So as you can see Elder Rada and I are seeing a LOT of success here. Yesterday we had 8 appointments scheduled and only 2 of them didn't happen! So a good portion of these investigators we're finding are turning out to be pretty solid. But there's one thing we need to see improvement with- and that has to do with our investigators' chuch attendance. None of them are keeping the Sabbath Day holy! If this keeps up we're going to have to push back their baptismal dates and possibly even drop some of them. You can't be baptized if you don't come to church needless to say.
Since we've been knocking a lot in the One-Ways and Hawwaiian Gardens we've had to face a lot of dogs lately. If they're mean we obviously don't open the gate and waltz onto the property. We're not that dumb. But if they sniff our hands and seem harmless we go on ahead. One dog in particular was surprisingly harmless. He was a big Rotweiller(?) named Tiny. At first I didn't want to take any chances because there was a sign on the garage that warned that he was a gaurd dog but he sniffed our hands and didn't do anything and lazily went back to his corner in the shade. So we went through the gate and knocked on the door. Then Tiny decided he wanted to come see us. He just walked slowly over to us and sniffed us and licked our hands a little. The owner answered the door and was shocked. She asked us "Didn't you see the sign? Didn't you see THE DOG? I'm afraid for you!" She was actually pretty amused that we knocked her door but she wasn't interested in our message so we left at that.
I wrote Elder Jordan Call a letter last P-Day and he wrote me back pretty fast. Sounds like he's having a good time in the MTC. He says there are highs and lows. As is the truth. He's serving spanish speaking in New York. Elder Rada told me that the temple in New York is in a building and there's a coffee shop right below it. The people that go to that temple in the mornings say that it smells like coffee.
That's cool Hannah gets to be on a WCF commercial! And I'm glad you liked my Darth Vader picture. I'm really enjoying the work over here now that we have a lot of people to visit. Hope you have a great week!
Love,
Elder Tyler Lewis