Highs and Lows in Indiana

Oila familia!                                                                                                       Monday May 20, 2013

It's been a crazy week in Indy.  The city has really started to grow on me.  Serving in the east side, I'm kind of in the ugly part of the city most of the day, but we get to drive through downtown 2 or 3 times a week, and it's really a pretty city.  Nicely kept with cool buildings and monuments etc.  Still miss the mountains though.  

The last week has been a roller coaster of sorts.  I've hit some definite highs, but definitely some lows as well.  The baptism on Tuesday was awesome but also a near disaster.  None of us have ever organized a baptism before, so we didn't really know what we were doing.  Our investigator was already really nervous, and us scrambling around to get stuff ready didn't help.  But we finally figured things out, and the baptism went well.  I was still kind of nervous it wouldn't be a good memory, but when I got up to give a talk on the Holy Ghost after the baptism, our new member had a glimmer in her eyes and all the anxiety left and I was completely filled with this Spirit and was able to give my talk just fine.  I'm glad the spirit came, cause I can't speak Spanish without him.  Pretty much, the Spirit gave a talk on the Spirit, and I just happened to be moving my mouth.

It's amazing what a difference the Spirit makes.  I've noticed it with me and my companions.  When the Spirit is there, the Spanish flows, the investigators are engaged, and the lessons go great, but when he's not there, our Spanish falters, investigators get anxious, and the lesson just goes on and on, without going anywhere.  It's amazing what the Lord can do with a bunch of 19 year olds when we invite the Holy Ghost into the room.

Other than the highlight of the baptism, the week was really tough. We had a lot of dropped appointments, and none of our investigators came to church. Saturday I think we had 7 planned lessons and they all but one dropped. It was a long day of knocking doors, and I really felt discouraged at the end. But because of this, we realized we aren't doing missionary work the way its meant to be done. The branch is hardly involved, and we want to change that. I personally want to know who the members are and love them, and as we do so, I hope they will love us back, and really help to fellowship the inactives, and bring us people to teach. We've been studying the role of members in training, and it's something we definitely can improve on.

Anyways, that's kind of a rundown of my week. I love you all and hope the last week or so of school goes great!  

Love,

Evan