March 7, 2011
Wow lots of exciting things happening with you guys lately. I love hearing about it all, if I were anywhere else I'd drop everything and come party with you guys for all that. Well I probably wouldn't have been invited to kauai anyways, but the cruise sounded good. and some other things, but i don't know if i'm supposed to talk about them...but life sounds pretty exciting right now, i'm pumped for you guys :D

so things have been going pretty sweet here in the big d as well. honestly, there may not be a sweeter place to be to do missionary work. the belle isle branch is growing like never before and the people there are amazing. the work is on fire. the book of mormon class we started has been successful and is taking off. the young mens and young womens programs are really beginning to pick up. the home/visiting teaching programs are being redrawn to become way more effective. and the members are solid. they're sacrificing much to help out with each other and with the investigators. the lord's work is really moving forward right now here in the branch. it will be a ward sooner than later. a stake or two one day. and to top it off, we had 5 baptisms yesterday in the branch. Cinco. It was a sweet experience. 3 baptisms from the Van Dyke elders and 2 from us.

To give you some more understanding of what's happening overall in our Michigan Detroit Mission, here's an excerpt from our weekly mission update: "14 People entered into a covenant with their Heavenly Father this week that will bless them for the duration of their lives upon the earth, and for all eternity. As far as we know there have not been 14 people baptized in a single week in our mission for a really long time, if ever. That is so great! The only thing that limits us from bringing forth “much fruit” is ourselves; the things that are now happening in the mission are a testimony that we are more fully allowing our Heavenly Father to do his work by getting ourselves (our will) out of the way. " and "In February, 23 souls were baptized, a great month! For March there are already 59 on date to be baptized. You are performing miracles with the Lord! We have set a mission goal to for 25 baptisms/month."

and our area has some more baptismal dates set with some really solid investigators for the next couple of weeks in march.

....BUT i'm getting transferred. tomorrow. uggh. oh man i was bummed, elder hoffman and i were pretty caught off gaurd. but i'm feeling better now. the city was the sweetest experience ever. and the work was picking up, and elder hoffman and i had come up with some pretty promising plans for this next transfer coming up. there's a lot of un-tapped territory in our area where we believe the elect are hiding and we have been praying for them and preparing for getting the work started with them this week. so that was tough to hear i'm taking off tomorrow. but i've managed to work through the bitterness of the situation. i'm still bummed, but i'm thankful i was blessed enough to be here at all and to be able to start off my mission here. i'm excited to see where i'm sent. but keep an eye on detroit, there are some big things happening there in the future.

but everything's going great. a lot of exciting things in the mission. i had the opportunity to baptize one of our investigators yesterday, my first baptism experience on the mission, and it was sweet. tyron smith, he's 19 and he's a stud. he's already talking about teaching his mom and his friends and wants to come teaching with us. the other investigator of ours who was baptized yesterday was a 9 year old named Michael. His mom is an investigator too but she can't get baptized until her marriage, so we went ahead and baptized him anyways. he said "i really feel it in my heart, i just need to get baptized in the right church and get the holy ghost!" haha he's a character, and a really sweet kid with a solid testimony and desire to serve Heavenly Father.

I think I'll be able to send you an email tomorrow and tell you my new address and where i'm going to be. President Holmes told me that this next area will probably be a place i end up staying in for a while, so you prob won't have to worry about the address changing for a bit.

oh and i bought a little sd card/usb uploader, so i can send a picture here and there. here's the one from our baptism. michael is the kid next to me, and tyron who i baptized is the guy right next to michael. elder hoffman my companion is the one in the suit. it was a really sweet day.

have a good week,
love ya guys