Week 40: Sweetwater, TX

May 27, 2013

Hola! 

I am so excited to tell y'all about my week! So we have been putting together programs for our branch to help our members share the gospel with their friends. Instead of going with the basic family mission plan, we are mixing things up. Along with holding a biweekly Book of Mormon institute class, Elder Cosman and I will be teaching the members about tools that we use every day. Tools such as pamphlets, cards, and gospel conversation skills. This is all to get their confidence up in presenting this grand message of Jesus Christ that we have to share. Knocking doors is at a minimum and we are strengthening the Latter-day Saints of this area. We had the stake leaders come to our branch yesterday for church and their instruction was phenomenal! It got us pumped up and ready to get the work moving again. I was a little down this week because we weren't having any success with new investigators but after yesterday I feel much more motivated and confident! I've been assigned to the Sweetwater branch for about five months now and it's great to be one of the missionaries to bring this "dead" area back to life! 

This is something from our weekly mission email: 

 The TLM is exploding with morning finding and baptismal dates.  Get ready, we had 2,365 morning finds in one week.  Elders Rios and Cosman had 118 morning finds just seven shy of outpacing one entire zone.  Congrats!  Also, we report nearly 90 baptismal dates which is the second highest in the year.  We have also tied this year's record of new investigators at 171.  Member referrals are also up. Numbers do tell a story.  But the real importance is the people behind each number. Each is a spirit son or daughter of Heavenly Father.  We note Sisters Johnson/Greenwood report a soul accepting the restoration, while Elders Arrendondo/Chapman (2), Kunkel/Staples, Bonomo/Cunningham; Hancock/Wallace, DeYoung/King (4), Kunkel/Staples (2); Hebdon/Squires, Kurtz, Horsman/Evensen, Ware/Bradley; Dunkle/White, Chuck/Hughes, Losee/Wright, Droubay/Dohner and Grimmett/Crompton were also busy with bringing souls to Christ. 

I bolded the part I wanted y'all to notice... Cool huh?! We've been contacting lots of people here but none really turn out to be interested. It feels good to see that our hard work is being noticed, though. I fully trust that the Lord is putting something special together for the future of this branch. Lots of new missionaries are helping this work. When I came out there were about 102 missionaries in our mission. We are at approximately 250 now so I'm sure the mission will be split soon. It truly is an exciting time to be a missionary of the Lord. Texas Lubbock Mission represent! 

Much love from The Lone Star State,

Elder Ricardo Rios