January 5th, 2009 (Email)

Buenas tardes!
My new companion is Elder Beverley from Salt Lake City Utah. He's a good elder. He lives around "Taylorsville" if you know what that is. He's kind of nervous still but he's getting used to it all. He's diabetic so that's interesting.
We've had some good experiences this week. We committed four people to baptismal dates over the course of the week. Not all of them are very solid and we're having a hard time getting in contact with most of them but we thought it was neat that they all said yes to the baptismal invite. The zone leaders were pretty excited. We're working with Robert Hullett again because he said he's willing to move out of his girlfriend's apartment by the 10th and he has a desire to live the word of wisdom. He committed to be baptized on the 17th. Two of the people with dates were just people we invited to be baptized on initial contact- their names are Johnathon and Edgar. And the last person with a date is named Frank Hernandez and he's really friendly but he doesn't show much commitment. We haven't been able to contact Jasmine Lopez all week though we've tried every day. We set up an appointment to visit her on Thursday though so we'll see how that goes. We did see her last Tuesday and that appointment went really well. She still really wanted to be baptized and her dad still supported her but they just didn't want to set up a date yet. So what we planned to do during our weely planning session is we're going to set up a day for her to have a baptismal interview with the zone leaders "just to see how she'll do." ;) And then she and her dad will see that she's way prepared and we'll move on forward and baptize her! That's the plan at least. We'll see how it goes.
It's really fun having Elder Harris and his greenie Elder Black living with us. Elder Harris has already organized the kitchen. I had the rest of the apartment all clean for them when they moved in and they were pretty excited about that. Elder Harris and Elder Black are on bike so they're exhausted by the end of the day. I can't count on my hands how many times Elder Harris has yelled "my anus is bleeding!"
Yesterday Elder Harris and I got bored during our dinner break so we looked through the Ensigns and found the three most attractive daughters of Zion in the ensigns and made a collage we entitled "Search Ponder and Pray." One is of a girl studying the scriptures, one is from the cover of the "steadfast and single" edition with the girl sitting at her desk pondering, and one is of a girl praying over her probably Dutch Book of Mormon. I took a picture. ;) Dont' worry, we're focused!
Elder Beverley and I ran into a drunk man up north in Paramount who stopped us and started exhorting us to go to Catalina Island. He told us "you should ask the Lord in a prayer-- tell him that Martell, who may have had a few too many drinks, came and told you that your leaders should send you to Catalina Island." Then he said a prayer for us which kind of went like this: "Please bless that these young men may be able to reach the stars, maybe not on their 100th try, but perhaps on their 101st try they'll just nick one of those stars. And please bless that they'll be able to meet the people you would have them meet, and that they'll have beautiful children. Amen." It was classic.
I've been really busy as a District Leader. The zone leaders are having me call all the elders in my district every night to check up on how their investigators with baptismal dates are doing. Elders Kemp and Twiss had a baptism on Sunday. That's pretty cool.
Well that's all folks! Have a great week and keep up with the running! Love you!
Love,
Elder Tyler Lewis