Another Week in Ephraim!

Yeah not a whole lot of new and interesting things happened this week. We picked up Cheyenne as a new investigator on Monday!! She's pretty awesome, but she didn't make it out to church yesterday, so when we meet with her tonight we'll lay down the accountability hammer. We'll try to set her on date for baptism as well. I really hope that will work out! Our biggest trial has been putting our investigators on date. Every lesson we prepare for it, they end up cancelling or something comes up that prevents us from inviting them. It's a challenge! We'll see how that works out.

The other day we got a call from a member saying that he has a friend that wants to start up the lessons! I love those phone calls! Well we met with him last night, and we also met with a former investigator that wants to start up the lessons again...both in the same house, same appointment! So the former investigator's name is Manny, a 17 year old Spanish kid that is "good friends" with bro George's younger daughter. He's got big hair! He seriously reminds me of the reincarnated Ronaldinho. He's a monster at soccer! We watched a bit of their game on Saturday and he and his team won the championship, and he was MVP. And he plays sweeper! Awesome! and the other guy's name is Kelly, and he is also "good friends" with bro George's older daughter haha so hopefully they're both taking the lessons for the right reasons! Kelly though seemed very sincere. His son took the lessons and got baptized several years ago. He said he just didn't feel like it was his time to get baptized back then. But now he's gone through a divorce and is thinking about life and what he wants out of it. He is in need of hope and peace! We saw him at church yesterday, so I think he'll start progressing pretty quickly. 

Other than that, we had a zone conference this week which went really well! But man those things are like 7 hours! I was pumped up after the first two and I wanted to just get out there and get back to work. It kinda dragged on after that, but it was all super good either way. Anyway the take away that I got from ZC was that as missionaries, we need to be the ones to initiate "operation: member missionaries" instead of waiting to be asked to help. One of the simple ways to do that is through service. Recently President Center asked all of us to put in at least 2 hours of service a week. Well this week I think we put in like 5 or 6 haha...lots of leaves! We helped out a couple less-actives we've been working with, and they were both extremely grateful for our service. It was rewarding, and a unique experience to see that type of gratitude in someone I've been working with like that. Usually it's just in a lesson setting, reading the scriptures or talking about the gospel. But this type of gratitude comes from seeing the fruits of the gospel and love in action. It's been good!

Well that's about it for this week! Transfer calls are this Sunday!

Love,

Elder Payne!