Hello again!

 

Talk about an interesting week. There were some definite eye openers but, as a whole, the week turned out fantastic. Here is the scoop!

 

First and foremost, I just want to bear my testimony of the power of member missionary work. We hit a wall a couple of weeks ago when we tracted for 8 hours and found 2 new investigators. Not only that, both of them dropped us the following week. Elder Miles and I had a very long and deep discussion of what our next step needed to be in order to change that trend and start finding more of Heavenly Fathers elect. We both felt impressed that the time of finding through tracting in our area was past and that it was time to start letting the members find for us. So, we made plans this week to visit certain members that we felt impressed would give us member referrals. We'll let the numbers show the results. We received 7 member referrals in the course of 5 days. With those member referrals now come 10 solid new potential or now new investigators for this week. We have high expectations for each one of them and we feel like a major baptismal harvest will be coming very soon in the Encanto 1ro Ward. My friends, I read a talk this past week by Elder E. Ray Bateman from the October 1998 General Conference titled "Pearls from the Sand." I would challenge each one of you to read it and see what you can do in your area to help those precious elect come unto Christ. I know that as you do this you will receive some of the sweetest blessings Heavenly Father has for us.

 

Also this week we had the opportunity to witness the marriage of 2 of our investigators. Jose and Maria Vargas have been investigators for about 5 weeks now and, wow, I have never met someone so prepared in my life. They read every assignment we give them, have kept every commitment we have given, and when we taught the Law of Chastity simply said, "Well, now we have a reason to get married...lets do it on Friday!" (This was on Wednesday.) So they did! They had family there, we took pictures, and right after we gave a church tour to them and their kids. It was a very spiritual experience for everyone. Their baptism will be this Saturday at 7:00. Both Elder Miles and I have a ton of love for this family and are looking forward to seeing them receive the blessings of baptism.

 

To close of the post for the week, on Tuesday Elder Miles and I had the opportunity to lead a Specialized Training Meeting with our zone. For those of you not aware, the MTC will start teaching a new simplified curriculum next may with a focus on 8 areas. These areas include things like "The Doctrine of Christ-the Missionary Purpose", "Receiving Revelation through the Book of Mormon", and "The Role of the Spirit in Conversion" just to name a few. In our mission we began an 8 month deployment process of this new curriculum to assure that we will be ready for the new missionaries when they come into the mission field. I tell you what, it's tough to put together a 3.5 hour training...To put it simply, we learned a ton on how to prepare...I bet we studied the doctrine of Christ for at least 30 hours over the last 2 weeks. But, when the training came we were sustained. The spirit was strong, the discussion was good, and everything turned out alright.

 

Well my friends, I'm out of time for this week. I hope that you all have a great week this week and that those who are going back to school have a great start to the year. Remember that you are always in my thoughts and prayers. I love you all and until next week, iQue Dios les bendiga!

 

Sincerely,

 

Elder Klemme

 

 

"Yes, that is a peacock": For some reason a ton of people have peacocks out here....I'm not really sure why...

 

 

"On the road to eternal progression": Jose and Maria the day of their marriage! Next step: BAPTISM!

 

 

"Not to mention...": Saturday I had the opportunity to attend the baptism of one of my former investigators in Montana del Sur. Edgar is going to be one strong member of the church. We found him street contacting one day and...wow, from the moment we met him we knew he was one of the elect. I look forward to seeing him again!

 

 

"Good Morning, Encanto!": I woke up this morning and looked out the window...this is what I saw. I thought you all would enjoy it too!

 

 

"Setup": This was our setup for the Specialized Training we gave on Tuesday. I never realized how long it took to get things set up like this...We were pretty impressed with it once we got it all setup. The filled baptismal font gave a nice spiritual touch to the meeting :)