Artesia week 5

Just a taste of what it's like here in New Mexico...

Here is the district from this last transfer!

Starting from the left we have Elders Ramirez, Jones, Moffitt :) , Thomas, Mitchell and England, and Sisters Starr and McCarthy.

Here I am washing the car

And depressing thought: I will not be having a car this coming transfer. Elder Ramirez and I will both be staying here in Artesia though. The ward is being split. There are elders moving in who will get our car and they will be in the outside towns of Dexter, Hagerman, and Lake Arthur. So, we still get the town of Artesia all to ourselves, but now only on bikes.

Elder Ramirez and me with our caffeine free Dr Peppers. He is obsessed with Dr Pepper, but since there is not caffeine, we got these ones. Good p-day activity.

This week the bishop gave us a name to go visit of a less active member. His address turned out to be the prison. Of course we can't go inside, but we were able to talk to a couple guards and they said he wasn't an inmate and he didn't work there either. Unfortunately, we don't know where he is. That happens pretty frequently though, that there are a bunch of members who have moved and no one knows where they are. Anyway, of course we had to snap a picture at the prison.

Dinner at a members house. Yum.

Now that it is a new transfer I am open for any random packages. However, I don't know if I really need anything. I just like getting mail. haha. Whatever you do, do not send any mangoes. I still have a giant unopened bag of them. I still have surprisingly a lot of food. I am actually pretty set right now. But maybe in a couple weeks you can send some cookies or Fritos or something.

Now for the news of this week: We met with Mark Monday evening and he was not doing too good. He had not read the Book of Mormon while he was on his trip up to Farmington. He said every time he picked it up he felt like he wanted to read the Bible instead. He told us he didn't want to keep meeting with us. But he said we can come back in 2 weeks. I asked him if he had done his fair share in actually reading the Book of Mormon to know if it was true and he admitted no. Moral of the story (and this can be applied to all of us): How can we expect to have a testimony of the Book of Mormon if we don't read it? Also, remember that he did say before that he believed it to be true, yet he had neglected to read it recently. The same is with us. Even if we once had a testimony but stop doing the simple things like reading the scriptures every day, we will lose it.

We saw Alberto and Brenda once this week, but it was only for like 10 minutes. They have at least been reading the Book of Mormon, but not too much progress as of now. I feel like we have essentially had to press the restart button on our work here in Artesia. Most of the investigators that we have started with or even picked up have been dropping off. But we were able to pick up another investigator, Tony, this week. She is a single mom with 2 kids, 14 and 6. In our first lesson with her she told us how 2 days before we had run into her on the street she had been talking with her mom how she needed to strengthen her relationship with God. Then we showed up. It was super awesome. She works a tough schedule and wasn't able to come to church. She has also had bad experiences in churches before, so that will be something we will have to work with. She has very high potential though and I am excited to see what the Lord's plans for her are.

No investigators at church this week again. BUT, we were able to get a couple less active families out to church that we have been working with. This one family has been here since November and hadn't been to church yet. Then on Sunday when they came walking in through the doors I almost started crying. I was so happy. I felt like everything finally paid off. It's tough when week after week no one you are teaching shows up to church. There were a little over 100 people there on Sunday.

This week when we were walking around on the streets we saw this lady painting some cabinets, so we just went over and starting helping her paint right then and there. And last night we were able to go back and have a lesson with her. Her name is Rita, and she is now a new investigator!!! It's hard to tell from the first lesson, but she likes us and I think there is some good potential there.

Here we go with my new planner cover for the transfer. 2 reasons. 1) Pioneer day is this transfer. Simple enough. 2) In both pictures, the pioneers are leaving behind a temple a moving on. This transfer we are leaving behind the age of President Augustin as president and are moving into a new era with President Heap. This should be an interesting transfer no doubt.

 Well fam, I love ya'll. I love you mom! I love you dad! I love you Meagan! I love you Courtney!