Mason's Letter -- March 5, 2011

Hey fam,

So yeah, about the filming the change meeting thing. The Pres wanted me to do it... I dunno why. So we filmed it and basically I'm not going to do anything with it, we just wanted a little reminder of all the craziness. I would like to send it home, but it's too big to be sent in an email. So you will have to wait to see it. And yeah elder Andersen is a studd. He is going to go back to usu after the mish and we are planning on getting an apartment together. We have had a lot of fun in the house together, and yes we do include my comp. He has told me a number of times that he likes being around us "Gringo locos", he says we are the 3 craziest Americans in the mission...all in the same house. It has really helped him to loosen us a bit and smile. He used to be a really serious person and would never smile or laugh, but now he is realizing that he can be a great missionary and also enjoy yourself.

So this week was a super full week, one of the most craziest weeks of my mission actually. The fun just never ends haha. So on Tuesday and Wednesday we had the leadership training meetings. All the zone leaders, district leaders and trainers (about 55 missionaries) got to go to it. Basically the Pres, my comp, and I just had to train them on all the new Preach My Gospel stuff. We have really just been pounding these things into the missionaries minds, and they are starting to catch on to it all. It actually went really good and the missionaries were all really excited.

We are all way positive about this month and we will get 300 baptisms in March. Last month we ended with 240, the highest number since Pres Veirs has been here. The missionaries are now finally starting to believe that they can be obedient AND baptize a lot of people...and not just kids, but families and men. so those meetings basically took up the whole day on Tuesday and half the day on Wednesday.

We ended up having to do some emergency changes this week, which is always upsetting. Satan is really trying to hurt the mission because he knows that things are starting to improve here. But there is good news this week. one day we went with the secretaries to help them out. They have a family of 9 there that are progressing. They have been kinda scared to put the baptismal date on them. So I went there one day to put it. It was a super spiritual lesson and was a wrestle. We got there and taught a great lesson and then we challenged them to be baptized. well there were like 3 of them with a few doubts, So we explained about each doubt and challenged them again and they accepted. Then we put the date and the crazy grandma of the family came in and started just speaking a bunch of apostasy and said that they needed to go to church for like at least a year to get baptized. So they all started re-thinking the date, But we explained it pretty well and the Spirit was testifying to them all that they had to do it. So they finally accepted, even with a bunch of stumbling blocks. It was a cool lesson and I'm super excited for them.

Also we have a baptismal date with one of our investigators for next Saturday. And this week we taught a lady and her granddaughters who aren't members and it went really well. A few of them looked really positive and they will be going to church on Sunday. So that was cool as well.

That's about all for this week. Filled with craziness but we like being busy! Hope things are great down there. Talk to you next week.

Love Elder Mason Cardon