Notes from Sam -- 18 Sep 2008

Yvonne's baptism; maybe you can sense how shy she is from the photo
With Elder Durkin at Yvonne's baptism

Dear family,

This will be a short one. But hopefully a good one.

Yvonne's baptism on Saturday went well. It was pretty exciting for me too. She was very nervous and shy the whole time, and apparently at first she didn't want to wear the baptismal dress because it was so ugly ("It makes me look like a 1930s woman," she said), but it all worked out in the end. Her confirmation on Sunday also went smoothly. Now comes the hard part - not letting her slip away.

I'm training again, which is great! Elder Stevens, my new companion, is from Sussex, but from the time he was 11 to the time he was 16 his family lived overseas - three years in Houston and three years in Hungary. He came back to England for his last two years of high school and did the IB program (English, Math, and Physics higher level and French among other things at standard level). A couple of his friends from school are freshmen at Stanford this year, so they'll be sophomores with me when I get back. He's the oldest of five, three of them teenagers (two sisters and a brother) and one two-year old brother. Sound familiar at all? : ) Needless to say, we are getting along pretty well. Elder Stevens hasn't met any of our investigators yet, but we have a very busy day ahead of us today, and we're going to get plenty of opportunities to teach together. He seems like a really intelligent person and a great teacher, so I'm excited about the coming transfer.

Lots of people are training this transfer. 19 missionaries are leaving and 21 have come in, which is apparently the biggest recorded turnover in EMM history. Elder McIntosh in my district now is training, so we have two new missionaries in the district. It's an exciting time to be here!

Dad, I'm excited for you in your new calling. I'm sure you'll do great. I would definitely like to have a ward mission leader like you in one of the wards I serve in. Ruth, it sounds like things are going great at Harvard.

We're needing to find new investigators right now. I haven't been the most diligent in speaking to everyone (see Preach My Gospel chapter 9) this past transfer, so I need to recommit myself and do better there. I think having Elder Stevens here will help me live up better to what I can do. I'm expecting to see some miracles as we really do our best to find those who are prepared to hear the gospel. They're definitely out there.

Love,
Elder Pimentel