Mason's Letter -- June 20, 2011

Hey famila,

Well sorry I didn't write again on Saturday...we didn't have a pday again. This week was week two of zone travels. On Tuesday we got to stay in SPS and had a few meetings and stuff like that and planned for the coming weeks. On Wednesday we were off to Progreso. We did the zone meeting there and it went pretty good. We talked to them about focusing more on weeks and not on months. Last month they were the Celestial zone (the best zone in the mission) and then this month they dropped to be one of the worst...they kinda just stopped working. But we had a good zone meeting with them, and after that we went out to work. I worked with one of the best elders in the zone (elder Ellet) last month he baptized 17 people with 4 families and this month he will baptize 9 people with another 4 families. That's amazing.

I went with him and it was a really great day. We went to the sister's area just to contact while they worked--we wanted to help a bit and just contact for a few hours. So we got lost and just talked to a bunch of people. We found some cool people and I hope the sisters can work with them.

Anyways we headed back to SPS on Thursday and had to do a few changes. One mini missionary wanted to go home so we needed to find a replacement for him quickly. We found someone at 11:30 pm that agreed to start the next morning. That kid was a life saver.

On Friday morning we headed out to Copan really early. We had a really good zone meeting with them and felt really positive. Then I went with the zone leaders (Elder Jackson my mtc comp, and Elder Andrade). That area has been cold for a while and doesn't seem to change (even with zone leaders there). In this whole year only 2 people have been baptized there. So I went with them to work and see how they were doing. We worked really hard on Friday and all day Saturday as well. I hoped that I was able to help them a little and show them that it was possible to have success there. Well Elder Jackson called me yesterday after church all excited and told me that they had 15 investigators in church...the most they have had for like 2 years haha. So I guess a lot of the people we found went to church. He was excited and now they have a lot of possible baptisms for the next month. Well we got back from Copan on Saturday night like at 8:30 pm, after a long 3-hour bus ride.

Yesterday we had to give talks in our little branch. It went really good, and after that the 2nd counselor in the branch presidency left with us all day to teach. He is really awesome and helped us out a ton. He took us over to a bunch of his friends and we got some good families out of it. It was a great day. We also put a baptismal date with Rosa's sister who just moved in with her as well. haha we are going to baptize her whole family if they keep moving in to her house one by one.

Lately my comp and I have been trying to talk to everybody possible and really set an example for the mission. We have been talking to people in every store and bus and taxi and have found lots of cool people. Last week we did 180 contacts (the mission goal is 120 and most missionaries never do that many in a week) and this week we did 170. So we feel good with our efforts and have seen some fruits.

The mission this month is looking alright. We started off slow, but all the zone leaders are telling us that this weekend we should have aver 100 baptisms with a lot of families and weddings. It looks like we could baptize another 50 families this month. Our goal was 101, but that's still good that we are maintaining a high rate of families baptized. Last month we were 2nd in Central America!

Well have a great week. I love you all.

Elder Cardon