We got a lot of referrals this week. Our ward is just incredible. I mean it when I say that this ward is the most missionary minded ward I've been in yet. This week we tried really hard to talk to as many members of the ward as possible. Whether they are active or less active. We had great success in doing so. Because every time we meet a new member we ask them if they know anyone we could teach. This week we ended up with 10 referrals. And lots of these are the kind of referral that the member wants to contact them rather than us which is more than ideal.
One such referral came from a pretty odd source. We were invited to activity days (8-11 year old girls) this week to present a message from the Book of Mormon. We were a little taken aback. I have never done anything like that before. We didn't have a whole lot of time to prepare. We were going to have a whole bunch of props but then we didn't have any time to get them and no way of bringing them to the church (because we're on bikes). So we made due with what we had. We had the girls illustrate the story of Nephi and Laban. The leader who played Laban wore my bike helmet and my back pack for his armor. The brass plates were my scriptures and the money they used to try to buy the plates was....my wallet. It was pretty fun. Right afterwards one of the leaders came up to us and said, "I have someone for you to teach. One of my friends has been asking a lot of questions about the church." We were like yes.
We had a cool miracle happen this week because of bikes. I love riding bikes. We ride around to our appointments and can talk to everyone along the way. On the way to one such appointment we met a man named Keith. When me and Elder Phair first got here we tracted into Keith and he said he was not interested because he was too busy. But when we saw him on the street that day something had changed. He asked us "hey do you guys remember me?" We were like no. He was like, "well....do you guys have a Book of Mormon." Ummm yes! We proceeded to give him a BoM and explained it. He all the sudden was way interested. We just taught him again yesterday. He asked us a lot of questions and we answered them and invited him to be baptized. He said maybe.
We also had zone conference this week which was spectacular. Elder Peterson my old companion is the new assistant and he's great. We talked about how we should practice winning. So we went home and roleplayed baptizing one of our investigators. Then we set the goal to get 2 baptisms this transfer and also to get one of those baptisms on Oct 20th. We wrote this goal on two posters and we hung them up in strategic places throughout the house. We know God will provide a way.
Yesterday we were asked to give a 10 min talk for Sunday school on the 5th Sunday. It was cool. We showed a quote of President Monson and Elder Bednar and then we bore powerful testimony about the importance of missionary work. We then took a big box of Book of Mormons and put them out on a chair and invited them all to take one and write their testimony in it and hand it out. Our ward graciously accepted this challenge. They are the best!
The work is really going great. I am thirsty for a baptism. We know the investigators we have will soon begin to progress and move along. Love you all and have a great week.
Love Elder Johnson
