August 27, 2007

Dear everyone,

Happy Birthday to Mom!

Good week! 26 total lessons, 22 new investigators. Better than ever before since I've been here. I'm still with Brother Piyolo, probably for the next two weeks until the next transfer starts. It's much different being companions with a non-fulltime missionary. Basically he just follows me around and helps me teach, but mostly I'm in charge I guess. I feel like the stewardship of the area is all on me, being a set apart missionary. It's different, and it will be good to have a change in a few weeks.

This week we met some very interesting people, including an inmate who just was released from 11 1/2 years in prison (I have no idea why). He seems like a genuine, kind, man. He probably weighs like 400 lbs. He promised to come to church yesterday but failed to show up for some reason. Again we had zero investigators at church. That's probably the hardest thing to get people to do. To be honest I really have no idea why. Everyone promises to come, but comes up with an excuse. It's so sad, because I know what they are missing out on when they skip church, but it's so hard to get them to understand what they are missing. Even a few of our member families are slowly falling less active. Nothing like loss of testimony or anything, just pure laziness! It's so frustrating because we stop by their homes multiple times each week, trying to be friendly and encouraging them to help us with missionary work etc, and they make promises but just fail to fulfill. Oh well. I only have my own agency; I can't force anyone to do anything else.

OH yeah! At church yesterday we got to watch two talks from the April 2007 general conference DVD. My first time to see them live. President Monson is awesome.

Sorry this is so short, but not a whole lot happened this week and my time is up. I'll write more next week.

I love all of you! I know this work is the Lord's!

Elder Mckay Moline