My goodness, what a wonderful week! Despite our zone dropping below 100 lessons, Elder Heindel and I not reading 20, and a really bad zone meeting on Friday, I feel great. There's nothing quite like General Conference to uplift my spirits and give me confidence. With so many meetings getting in the way of our schedule, we did quite well - 4 new investigators and over 60% member present lessons. Sunday night was full of miracles as we taught many new investigators with our priest exchange in tow. He loved it! How can I be sad when we're having such great priest exchanges? How I wish I could've gone out with the missionaries a lot more than I did before my mission (1 time). I know that the experiences these young men are having will shape the way they start their missions and even give them extra incentive to serve in the first place. Nothing makes me happier than having a priest walk up to me at church and say, "So when are we going on exchanges again?" I hope our efforts help these young men serve missions.
Transfer calls came on Saturday and my dreams came true. I'm training!! You have no idea how much I've prayed to train someday. It's been one of the biggest heartaches of my mission, to be quite honest. Nevertheless, the Lord is merciful and I'll be privileged to be training in Rogers, Arkansas in the Rogers YSA branch. I'm so excited! I'll be ending my mission in the state I started it. I absolutely love Arkansas! Now comes the waiting game where I wait to find out who i'm training. He comes into the mission home on Wednesday and I'll get him on Thursday. Who knows who he is! What's his name? What does he look like? Where's he from? Haha I could go on and on :) I hope he reads this someday and realizes how excited I was to get him. I should be really interesting to serve in the YSA branch. That means that I won't have an absolute area to be restricted to and that we'll be proselyting in a different way. This means that I'm not necessarily going to be teaching everyone I meet, which could be tough, but I'm also excited to teach people my age. So many unknowns. I know the Lord will take care of me.
So
yeah, I'm leaving Willard. Kind of sad to leave an area that I feel
like I just came to yesterday. We have so many great things going on
that it's ridiculous. I don't think I've ever found so many new
investigators my whole mission as compared to these last 2 months. I
always ask the Lord to pour out His Spirit upon this area and He truly
has - I can't complain. Just to give you an idea of what Heavenly Father
has helped us do in the last 2 months, we first came to an area with
around 5 investigators, a few less-active families to work with, and a
couple of potential investigators (mostly member referrals). Hours and
hours of tracting and hunting later, we've handed out almost 100 Book of
Mormons, we've found close to 30 new investigators, we're working with
15 less-active families, and we've found close to 60 potential
investigators. Of course, not all of those potentials are solid, but
many of them are starting to turn into new investigators. Last week I
mentioned Lori. At our return appointment she came prepared with
questions, she having read lots of the material we left with her. We had
an excellent lesson on the Restoration and she sincerely wants to know
if it's true. It feels good to know that it all started with a
successful door approach a few weeks ago. I know that she'll get
baptized. I can honestly say that I'm leaving Willard a lot better than I
found it, which feels so satisfying. In a town of less than 5,000 we've
seen miracles. So it will be hard to leave. I feel a little sad because
I didn't really get close with anyone here, but I did my job and I did
my best. Elder Heindel (bless his soul) will be staying here with
Elder Fritschi and it'll be a transfer of harvesting. They're going to
baptize like crazy!
Haha
crazy story of the day: I mentioned that yesterday Elder Heindel and I
had a great evening exchange. We went out to Walnut Grove to try by a
family that we tracted into and said we could come back. Their names are
Nikki and Shawn and they have two cute little boys. Luckily they were
home and they let us right in. As we were introducing ourselves, they
said we could have a seat on the couch. Elder Heindel sat down first,
but then scooted over to give Josh (our priest exchange) some room to
sit. As he moved over, he suddenly jumped up and yelped. He instantly
grabbed his rear. In his hand was a large piece of glass that had
stabbed him in the bum! He was trying not to make a big deal out of it,
but he was obviously in pain. They responded by saying, "Darn, I thought
we cleaned it all up." (referring to a broken pane of glass) Not
wanting to prematurely end a first lesson, I said, "Aw, he's alright."
But then I leaned over and whispered, "Dude, are you okay? Like is it
bad?" To make a long story short he toughed it out and we finished the
lesson, thus picking up 2 new investigators who want us to come back.
Nikki especially liked the message of the Book of Mormon. My companion
is such a champion! We're not too worried because we don't think the
actual glass went into his buttock, but it sure bled a lot. We were
joking around that he got in a knife fight. Hard core Walnut Grove!
(pop. 600ish)
Well,
as always, there's so many other stories from my week, but not enough
time to share. If I did I would talk all about my last ZLC, our
trainwreck of a zone meeting, and some of the crazy people I met. Love
ya bunches! Happy birthday April! .....and.... Jesus loves you!
Love, Elder Atkin
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