A Great Day in the Mission Field!

Dear Family and Friends,

I am really excited about things that are happening this week.  Yesterday I had a really good day.  After church, my companion and I decided to stop by a few former investigators to check-up on them.  We stopped by three houses and were able to get in contact with someone at all three places and make plans for appointments.  Then, at dinner we got a referral from the Sister missionaries in the Spanish Branch to teach someone that they had just contacted, so after dinner we stopped by that person and set up an appointment with her for this week.  She sounded really excited and eager to learn about the gospel, though a bit suprised at how quickly we responded to the Sisters' call (afterwards we ran into the sisters who were still knocking that street).  And then when we ran into the sisters, one of them, Sister Clawson, told me about an investigator who we had passed off to her when I was in the Heritage Ward.  You might remember me mentioning a Jordan Cohen in one of my e-mails from then.  She is Jewish, but her boyfriend, who is a member, had told us that she wanted to take the lessons.  She was doing well, but our lessons were always very far apart and we had only been able to teach her three times out of the two transfers I was there.   We started teaching her when we found out that she lived out of our area, so we had Sister Clawson and her companion start teaching her.  Well, Sister Clawson told me yesterday that Jordan was baptized a while ago and that she is super solid in the church.  I was so happy to hear how great things were going with her.  I feel so blessed right now even just thinking about it.  The Lord has truly granted me many great blessings, and I see so clearly how I would have accomplished nothing on my mission without His help and grace.  Well, I have to go now.  I still haven't written my letter to President Pike yet, so I have to do that before I run out of time.  Thank you so much for everything that you do.  I pray that God will continue to bless and watch over all of you.

Love,

Elder Norton

A Few Changes!

Dear Family and Friends,

Things are going better this week than they did last week.  We have a ton of work to do here, so my companion and I are being kept very busy.  Most of the work is trying to contact all of the referrals that we have been given from headquarters, but we have finally been able to actually meet the people that we are trying to reach, so I am very excited.  We have a new person that we are teaching.  His name is Carlos, and he is part of a less active family.  His oldest sister is the only active member in his family, but we are trying to re-activate his whole family as well.  We also are starting a new policy in our mission.  Starting in September, we will not be having any more meals with members.  We will be responsible for all of our meals now, and not just for breakfast and lunch.  The whole purpose for doing this is to free up that prime time for finding new people to teach.  I think that this is going to help the work a lot, but it is going to take a bit of getting used to for the missionaries and the members as well.  Well, I have to go now, but I will write again next week.  Thanks for all of your love and support.

Love,

Elder Norton