48 and a better week!

Hey Mom,

im doing real good. had a real good week.

before i forget i did get the package from dear elder. i think Catanach and i have downed most of it.

ill probably get my birthday packages on the 3rd at transfers. ill get the cards on my birthday tho.

sounds like you have lots of missionary work going on. i often think about how doing missionary work not as a missionary will be different. when i leave my mission im going to set some goals and try to figure out some ways to continue sharing when im back.

Elder Catanach keeps making me feel old. it didnt help that we drove through Foothill the other day to get our van fixed. it was so weird and it hit me like a wave how long i have been out.

im excited for em getting a car.

sounds like grandma and grandpa and everyone are really busy so ill let them take a rain check.

we have district meeting on my birthday so we will probably have some Elder Barron appreciation time.

had a good week this time. zone conference was great. we learned a few things. we received some instruction on how we could better conclude our first lessons to set our investigators up for success. as a mission we get 3 new investigators for other CA missions' 2. we also get twice as many lessons with members as the CA mission average.

another thing that we learned was how to have a 'plan b' lesson in case our investigators dont keep their commitments. if they dont, then we have to express disapointment and we cant move on. sometimes difficult to do when you teach sensitive people. i think it will be good though to hold people to their word. quote from President: "silence is an excellent way to express devastation." we practiced expressing devastation to our investigators in the conference. we then concluded early and President told us to find a new investigator to start off teaching the right way. we found one and taught her the Restoration. havent seen her since because she is out of town.

henry got to Church this week. he seemed to enjoy it. we had our new ward mission leader teaching the class and we had henry and a few less active members there. one of them was really crazy and kept trying to derail the lesson so i told him that if he wanted to ask those questions he could ask them to me in private after class. then everything went smoothly. we also had some good lessons with henry. he is basically set in stone as a baptism. just cant happen till dec 5th. i think i will try to get him interviewed before i leave the area.

one of our newer investigators, mel, has started to be really exciting to teach. we have taught him lessons from parts of the Restoration lesson since we started teaching him. he got really excited last time because he watched some Conference talks and asked questions about it. things are starting to click for him.

we finally pinned the sammons down and got them BoMs to read. they were a bit resistent and we told them basically to cool it until we could teach them more about it tonight.

chris el** has started to read the BoM alot on his own. good to see him taking some initiative. i dont think i have any other real exciting updates.

oh, about henry. he supports his family in the Phillipines from here. his daughter and sister live in san diego tho. his daughter just had henry's first grandson. the daughter and sister know about his conversion but i dont think his wife does. i think that henry is planning to go back some day and have the missionaries teach his wife while he is there. she is apparently very Catholic. all his friends are workers in the homes. he gave us a referral for his friend that works at a home just outside our area. (darn!) but the missionaries in that area are some of my favorites. we gave them another referral that they got a baptism from and we havent gotten anything from them.

Have a good week!

Love your favorite missionary,

Elder Taylor Barron