Love from Sam 10 Jan 2015

Dear Family!

This week was pretty solid! 

On Monday we spent all day sweeping the car park, preparing stake presidency reports and key indicators for the mission, in preparation for Mission Leadership Council, we started at 7:20 a.m. and finished at10:00 p.m, with one meal in between. it was fun :).........

Tuesday we had MLC, it was a great meeting. President Rasmussen got super bold with the Zone Leaders which was great and it really helped them realize how important their role is in the mission. We focused on the talk, "Lord, Is it I?" Given by President Uchtdorf in the last General Conference.  After MLC, I got to go on exchange to Nottingham with Elder Debeikes! It was amazing to work with him, teach with him, and we stayed up pretty late talking. which was way good to catch up with him. I would totally live with him at BYU if I chose to go there when I get home! 

Wednesday we went to a chinese buffet with some of their chinese investigators.. it's absolutely unreal how much love I have for chinese people. they are so easy to love! it makes me want to finish my mission in a university area so badly! Wednesday night Elder Lu made chinese food for the part-member family that we're working with. It was loads of fun to cook together and share a relatively normal experience with them, for them to see us when we're not teaching them the gospel. One of the people in the family, Steve, really opened up to us. He let us know all of the concerns he has with the church. Sometimes investigators are afraid to tell us what they have struggle believing in, or why they don't want to join the church, because they are afraid that they will offend us. Really though, when they tell us their concerns it helps us like crazy so that we can teach for their needs. We were extremely grateful that he felt comfortable enough to open up to us about his concerns. Most of them are about Joseph Smith, which is good, because I feel that's where my testimony is strongest. 

Thursday we were able to teach Simon again. He's getting baptized tonight! we're really excited for him. He's asked me to baptize him, so I'm looking forward to that as well.  It's ridiculous how much we've been blessed this transfer. we've had hardly any time to work, but each week we've had at least 3-4 new investigators in our teaching pool, and these people are sticking around! they're not "1 and done's" as well call people in the mission who hear one lesson and then avoid the missionaries. I'm not sure what the difference has been, but I'm grateful for it none the less. 

Yesterday was a great day. A few weeks back, Elder Lu and I found a really nice lady named Deborah, but unfortunately she didn't live in our area, so the missionaries from another ward taught her. She moved into our area this week! so she is now our investigator again! that was  a big blessing. She is also doing very well, she's on a baptism date, she's been to church, she's working on quitting smoking, and she believes the church is true. Another miracle! 

Today we are going into Birmingham because an Elder left his backpack at the train station there, so we'll need to drive it back to his area in Peterborough. Then we have the baptism! we'll send pics next week. I hope that you all have an incredible week! talk to you soon!

Love you SO MUCH!!!!

Elder Harris