Thursday, September 24, 2015

Week 61- I'm Staying in Greenville

September 21, 2015

Dear Family and Friends,

Things are rolling here in Greenville. Everything is going well! I said goodbye to my old companion Elder Berry and I got a new companion named Elder Dickerson. He was previously a zone leader in Wilson, North Carolina.  We were companions for two days back in May when we had a Leadership Conference where we learned a new teaching method. While we were companions while we tried out the new teaching method out in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Elder Dickerson has been out for more than 21 months so I may end up being his last companion. I am still holding true to not having a companion that is younger than me as Elder Dickerson is older than me, too.  Even the two new Elders that I trained in the past were older than me. 

Two new English-speaking sisters were assigned to our ward so we gave them all of our English investigators and now we are teaching only in Spanish. 

A lot of our scheduled lessons with investigators fell through this past week so we tracted quite a bit this past week. We've trying to find more Spanish speaking people to teach since we gave all of our English speaking investigators to the new sisters in our ward.  We did, however, decide to keep teaching Larry ourselves.  He has a baptismal date set for October 17th.  He is still trying to stop smoking and he has to come to church for the next two weeks in order to make his date. He got a job in Raleigh so he is only home on Saturday and Sunday. He has been sick the past few weeks so he hasn’t been able to come to church. 

We had a conference this Saturday with the Kinston Stake President, President Baker, and all of the Bishops and ward mission leaders in the stake. We talked about how we can incorporate missionary work into the ward council and how to get more member referrals. It’s actually really sad because I have only received two member referrals during my entire mission! The most solid investigators that we teach come from member referrals. Twenty-five percent of member referrals get baptized! Only one in seventy investigators that missionaries find end up getting baptized.

Tomorrow we have a Zone Conference where three Zones are getting together with President and Sister Baker. President Baker assigned me and Elder Dickerson to conduct the 70 person meeting. I have to conduct the second half of the meeting. I was nervous about my assignment, but then I found out that President Baker had assigned the other two sets of Zone leaders and the sister training leaders to give 20-minute trainings during the conference. I will take conducting the meeting any day over having to give a 20-minute training in front of everyone. 

I know that this is the true church. I know that the Atonement of Jesus Christ is real that we can apply it in our lives every day. I know that making covenants with our Heavenly Father gives us the power to overcome Satan and anything in our life that we are struggling with. I know God loves us and he wants us to come back to live with him again.

Hope everyone has a great week!!!

Love, Elder Cannon