Mason's Letter -- March 26, 2011

Hey familia,

So this week has been pretty good and normal for me. I hope you got all the pics and stuff. The ruins were really tight. Oh, and about the family--so there are 3 single mothers (their husbands just decided to leave them) and they all have 2 to 3 kids each. So we baptized 2 of the 3 mothers and all the kids. And today the third mother will be baptized. She has like cancer or something so we never even saw her when we were teaching the family because she was always upstairs. But we have started teaching her and she accepted the baptismal date for today. It will be hard to baptize her because she can't walk or even talk very well. So I think 2 of us will have to do the baptism. But she is way cool and really wants to get baptized.

Last week was the week of the multi-zone conferences in the mission. They went really great. I talked about the importance of baptizing families and Priesthood-aged men. We have been trying to focus a lot more on that in the mission. Before, the mission used to baptize just kids without their parents. That wasn't the best situation, and we have ended up with a ton of inactive members. The mission secretary told me that over the last three years the mission baptized over 10,000 people...but the retention number is horrible and the stakes and wards didn't grow much at all in that time. So we have really tried to change that and we are seeing the fruits. We have made a really awesome plan to focus on families and I know it will work. Also in the mission this month we should end with a really good number, about 260 baptisms. Every month we are getting better and the number of families baptized, and men, are growing as well. So it's really cool to see that growth.

This week we went and visited some zones and worked in some areas that aren't doing so hot. On Tuesday we had a lot of success in the areas that we went to. I went to an area called Trincheras in the Fesitranh area. We felt an impression to contact a house (the first one of the day) and we entered in and found a family. Apparently the daughter in the family is an active member and the boyfriend of the daughter is the ward mission leader....and she never told the elders about her non-member family???!!! haha well the mom started complaining about how in the church we dance and stuff. I guess she went to an activity and after the activity they put on some music and danced. (Evangelical people believe that it's of the Devil to do any sort of dancing) so she got way offended and left. Well she was going off on that and then all of a sudden the missionary I was with just told her to stop talking and invited her to listen to our message. She then stopped and agreed. It was pretty bold to say but it was definitely an impression of the Spirit. So we taught the restoration and explained that it's OK to dance. Well she felt the Spirit and we challenged her to get baptized. She agreed that if she received an answer that she would. So that was cool to see that the very first contact we did when following the Spirit led us to that kind of success. I know she will get baptized. Then the rest of the day was really similar. We just entered a ton of houses and found a ton of new people.

On Wednesday we traveled to a little mining town called Mochito to do a fireside for the members. It went really great and it's a beautiful little town in the middle of these huge mountains.

Today we gotta get ready for the baptism and I think we are going to go bowling. The change is winding down and I'm pretty sure my comp will be leaving. If not he will "die" here in the office and we will be together for 4 changes (6 months). I might as well just marry him haha. But I think he will leave and I will get a new comp. The only problem is that right now we don't really see many possibilities for my next comp. It will be interesting. Well thanks for everything. Sorry this is a boring email. I love you all.

Elder Mason Cardon