June 9th, 2009 (Email)

hello!
It's been a really really busy week. Elder Rada is a really hard worker and he's helping me get this area in shape. Hopefully I'll be able to remember all the stuff that happened this week.
First of all, Sister Chun Facebooks a lot. You should add her as a friend. Her name is Chitose Chun. Maybe I'll just have her add you guys. So if you get a friend invite from some Asian lady from Cerritos California named Chi Chun just remember I live with her and she's really cool.
Well we've been doing a lot of work. Last week we found TWELVE new investigators. Not all of them are solid and not all of them were really there for their return appointments, but then again a good portion of them were. The Lord truly blessed us this week. The week before was a little alarming because we didn't find anybody so I prayed a lot and I even fasted a couple of times and then Elder Rada came with his 18 months of missionary experience and we found tons of people.
We had Zone Conference on Friday. This time we had our meeting in the mission home! That was neat. I haven't been there since November 4th 2008. We had a training on how to use our time more wisely. We were instructed to stop visiting people that we don't need to visit. Immediately a name and a face popped into my mind- Bro. Swanson. Hopefully he doesn't get offended. President Sexton told us that there around 3 million people in this mission. Then he asked us "Who's going to teach all those people?" Then he told us "You don't have time to teach ALL of those people. You only have time to teach those that will prepare themselves to be baptized." Last transfer we had 48 baptisms as a mission. For the first time in years we exceeded our goal- which was 47 baptisms. So we're definitely supposed to keep inviting people to be baptized during the first lesson.
Since I got here we've been teaching this less-active family named the Gonzalez family. They have an eight-year-old girl named Samantha and we've been preparing her to be baptized. She was baptized on Saturday by a member of the ward named Bro. Kau. She asked me to confirm her. I'll send you a picture of Samantha after I print it today.
We have a new Spanish investigator named Carlos. In this area we're supposed to find, teach and baptize in English and Spanish so we don't really have limits on who we get to teach (unless they speak a language other than English or Spanish of course.) Anyway, Carlos is so prepared. He's 87 years old and he called the MTC to have missionaries come visit him. We get referrals from the MTC via text message so we received his information and then went to his house to meet him. During our first lesson we invited Carlos to be baptized June 27th and he said he'll prepare himself for that date. He came to Church on Sunday and we spent an hour at that Spanish ward to make sure he was fellowshipped. He loved church.
Yesterday we taught our investigator named Lorraine and we had a member named Sis. Jensen come to the appointment to meet her and invite her to church. Lorraine will be coming to church this Sunday. Last night we taught another new investigator named Fred and we brought a member named Logan Ruru to the appointment to meet Fred. We invited Fred to prepare himself to be baptized July 11th and he accepted. As you can see we're working on bringing more members with us to lessons. During Ward Council on Sunday we gave out assignments to the presidents of each auxilary to find people to come to the appointments we specified to them. Elder Rada says that teaching lessons with members present is the secret to having a lot of people choose to be baptized. This new companion is teaching me a lot of useful stuff.
Hey thanks for the package! Thanks for the Ensigns and the Gospel Art Book. That'll be handy. Elder Rodriguez actually went and bought a copy of that right before my package arrived. Hannah that notebook of drawings is awesome! Thanks! It's cool to see how you're art skills have become better and better over the months. Thanks for the Bob Dylan T-shirt! I'll be able to listen to good music again... someday.
This morning Elder Rada cooked a huge breakfast. He knows how to cook really well. He made Sister Chun and I these huge breakfast burritos. It was really good and I'm already really full.
Well, it's been a productive week. I'm happy about that. We'll be having some baptisms this transfer I'm sure. So Lynsi's finally engaged eh? Tell her to send me an invite :) Glad to hear you made it to St. George alright (eventually)! Talk to you again next week!
Love,
Elder Tyler Lewis