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
