Playing a Small Part

His companion doesn't like the camera :)

Buenos!

This week has been pretty good, but it was a little slow at first. We are working hard in this area, and we actually ended up teaching double-digit lessons again! Yeah, we are seeing a lot of success in our tracting efforts right now. Most of our lessons this week were doorstep lessons during tracting, so we are finding plenty of new investigators. The only problem is getting back in with people. We are having a hard time with people being home for their return appointments, and getting that second lesson in with people. This week we also had some fun experiences by accidentally tracting into members, haha. One of them, Sister D, is this sixty-year-old black lady who has only been a member of the church for a couple years. She was super funny though. She gave us Graham crackers and Koolaid, and we sang some baptist songs about Jesus, haha. Super nice lady. Also this week, we were able to meet with one of the most progressing investigators that the Hermanas were teaching. His name is J, and he's a total stud. He knows the Book of Mormon is true and stuff, so we're not sure what's holding him back from baptism at this point. We are going to try to set a baptismal date with him this week though.

Other interesting thing with Cookeville: There's a ton of Hispanics here that don't actually speak Spanish. We've been running into a lot of people that speak this Mexican-Indian dialect called Misteco. These people are about as Lamanite as it gets. Last week we taught this lady the whole Restoration lesson before we realized she couldn't understand us. We asked her to be baptized and all she said was, "Sí, Jesus Cristo." Yup, it's fun.

On Thursday we had a Zone meeting in McMinnville. It was pretty fun, but the heater in the church was broken, so it was freezing cold! We had trainings by the ZL's and STL's. Good stuff. Church on Sunday was good. They call it fast Sunday, but it was anything but fast. We were at the church from 8:30 to 4:30, so it was just tons of fun. It was really funny though, in one of the Sacrament meetings, this little kid got up (couldn't have been older than 10) and said, "I like to bear my testimony...my family loves me...Joseph Smith was a prophet..." etc. Then, he says, "And if your heart and your mind are in accordance, it's probably the Holy Ghost. Amen." I thought it was super funny.

I have some exciting news about March 19th: one, D is getting baptized! She was a lady that Elder W and I met on the bus back in Clarksville. She had met with missionaries before, so we were able to refer her to the English elders. And now she's getting baptized! I'm glad that I got to play a small part in that, and I'm super excited for her. The other exciting thing about the 19th? We found out today that David A. Bednar is going to visit our mission!!! What?! Yeah, it's going to be sweet. Also, Craig C. Christensen of the 70 will be coming too. It should be awesome.

Ok, my ponderizer this week is Ether 12:41, "And now, I would commend you to seek this Jesus of whom the prophets and apostles have written, that the grace of God the Father, and also the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, which beareth record of them, may be and abide in you forever. Amen." I love the phrase, "seek this Jesus." We need to continually search for ways that we can come closer to the savior, and as we do so, his grace will attend us. Hope y’all have a good one this week!

Love,
Elder Mitchell

Again, he doesn't like his picture being taken

Pictures from around Cookeville