February 13, 2012

What's up ya'll? I know we are rebuked when we talk in lingo as missionaries but I feel I can do it in email. It feels good!

Biggest news of the week, me and elder Willden found ten new investigators! two are families! We tracted into them all too. Way good stuff. When leaving the Flahives house one night we realized that they have a family proclamation to the world on their wall.... yeah... when they turn around it says "ELECT" on their back. They are so awesome. He played college football and they are avid frisbee golf players. They offered to take us some P-day, gonna be sweet! They will actually be a lot of work though believe it or not, his mother and family are very strong catholic. His best friend growing up was Mormon though, so he knows all about us, but there is one thing that he needs that is going to prick his heart, we just have to find it!

The other family is the Herreras. Talk about right place right time, when they opened the door and let us in all's they could say was "wow you came at the right time" Over and over again. He is currently out of work, and him and his wife just recently were thinking about finding a religion for their family! (2 year old son) So uh ya, that was amazing. We taught them about families and the restoration and the spirit was so strong! Holy cow, I can't wait to see what happens with them. They said they would be baptized if they for sure knew it was true. He is catholic but the mom grew up without a religion. She seems to already have a small testimony about everything though. Way saweet.

One more investigator I will tell you about is Cindy. I challenged her to be baptized during the first lesson and she committed! March 3rd! I am worried about her though, because she didn't come to church yesterday and seems to have a WOW problem and chastity problem. We are seeing her tomorrow though so we will see what's up.

So this week Elder Willden challenged me to pray for a certain gift of the spirit, study it, and do everything possible to obtain that gift. I chose gift of discernment. To help us be in the right place at the right time and to help us discern investigators needs. One day we had an appointment flake on us (which happens ALL THE TIME!) and our back up plan was to tract a certain street, well we started tracting it and it just didn't feel right, I could tell Elder Willden was feeling it to and when I asked him about it he said he felt it too. So we weren't sure what we were supposed to do but we started walking and I read a street sign "Valentine Loop" it just jumped out at me, we both new that's where we needed to be knocking. Long story short, 2 new investigators came from the loop. (One being the Herrera family) Another being Victor. Who is an avid hunter! All big game. Way awesome. He wants to take me coyote hunting.... haha. I wish! We also had 5 new potentials from that street and even 2 non member referrals! DANG! It was the right place at the right time.

I wish it was all success though. It's amazing how high you can feel during the day and then bam, you feel lower than the dirt.The people here are way stuck in their ways and very stubborn. Mostly being catholic. I HATE PEEP HOLES!! You knock on a door, you see the peep hole go dark, then light again, and the door never gets opened. Grr. People all the time lock their door and then walk away, or turn on the light, look outside, shut the light off, and walk away... I want to yell inside... that wasn't obvious! I know you're in there!!! There are some very very strange people here in Santa Fe, all different kinds. It's awesome. We made friends with the pastor of a baptist church and he invited us to bible study. Cool experience! Way weird feeling though. You could tell the pastor had told everybody we were coming because they tried as hard as they could to fellowship us into their church, and you could tell the pastor made some remarks and looked at us to see if we would say anything... but as much as we wanted to we never did. Me and Elder Willden don't study, We Talmage! I can't believe how much my thirst for knowledge has increased!

Well it's time for the Valentine bowl! Gonna be an epic game of football with the whole zone. I'm pumped! Tell the whole BBALL team they better kick some major trash this week! I love you all and the church is true!

Elder Turnbow

PS Thank you all once again for the updates on everything. Keep em coming. I wish I could talk about every little thing you inform me of but there isn't time. Thanks though!