September 3, 2012
Rain=HOT!
So this week was nuts! Last Sunday, President
O called us to talk about the baptisms. We’ve been having a lot of
problems with falling baptism dates and it needs to stop! So, President took
action and set a goal for the entire mission: 10 new investigators with
baptismal dates by the end of the week! You’ve got to understand that we just
finished finding 12 new investigators last week and almost all of them have a
baptismal date. But when President sets a goal, you just do it. We’ve really
been having a lot of success lately finding people. Mostly because we haven’t
been forcing things and the Spirit has just been dropping these people in our
laps. I really don’t know how to explain what we have been doing because to me
it seems like we aren’t doing anything special. We’ve slowed things down a
little and are really being guided in everything we do. These people that we
are finding are ready and when we invite them to pray, they do it! Not only do
they do it but they get an answer! We’ve been really blessed lately so we
weren’t too worried about meeting the goal. Things went pretty good and by
Wednesday we had 5 new investigators. Then we went a couple days without finding
anyone! So Sunday came along and we needed to find 5 new people before 9:30. We
went out to teach after church but NOBODY was home! Things were looking pretty
slim and we hit 7:00 with 4 people left to find. As the zone leaders we HAD to
meet this goal. I still don’t know how it happened but from 7-9:15 we found 4
sweet new investigators, had some pretty sweet lessons and marked 4 baptismal
dates. In 4 separate lessons!!! Talk about miracles. There is no possible way
that we could have planned things so perfectly. All I can say is we had a
pretty awesome experience and we were really blessed by the Lord. So as a
mission, we found 268 new investigators and marked 178 dates with them in the
last week. Talk about an inspired goal.
So, at the moment our teaching pool is MASSIVE!
We have 20 people with a marked baptismal date and I don’t know how many other
people we have. We have a couple families that we are working with and some
other people that just need dates re-marked. We have no time to teach these
people! Our next open appointment isn’t until Saturday!! But I know that the
Lord is going to make it so that we can take care of all these people and help
them enter the waters of baptism. We have two people getting ready for baptism
this week and dates marked for the first 5 weeks of next transfer. Lots of work
but that’s the way I like it. Hence, I don’t want to be transferred!
Another crazy thing that happened this week. So
Saturday we were at the baptisms (unfortunately ours fell so we didn’t have
one). There was a wedding at the other chapel and someone forgot to fill the
font! And you know how long it takes to fill one of those things. We turned it
on but we were already late because it took us a long time to get the keys and
it wasn’t filling fast enough. So we found an old hose in the back closet,
hooked it up to the sink in the bathroom and ran water from there for about
half an hour. Elder H and I had to hold the hose so that it would work but
we had enough water to do the baptisms. They started over an hour late and they
had to do them from their knees but it worked. Just another one of those random
stories that happen on your mission.
Anyways, I hope everything keeps going well at
home. Enjoy school and have a good week!
Love, Elder Dola
