More UPS than downs!

Hello Dearest Loved Ones,

First off, I´m required to inform you that I have changed my email. The mission has officially asked us to switch back to myldsmail.net. Luckily, myldsmail.net is now using GMAIL and it works really well. My new email address is:

matthew.mooney@myldsmail.net

So if everyone could please write me at this email I would greatly appreciate it. I´ll still be able to check this one for the next couple of weeks, but I´m gradually switching to the other. Thanks!

This week definitely had it´s ups and downs, but definitely more UPS than downs. On Wednesday we broke our record for number of lessons in one day. That was exciting! The next day we were pumped and taught above normal again. Then unfortunately it slipped back down. It´s always great when the Lord blesses us with days of success like that to show us that we can be doing a lot better. The health of my companion seems to be doing a lot better now. It´s not keeping us from working and we´re both more positive!

An awesome, strange and unfortunate things that happened this week was.... An 11 year old kid named Dilon started talking to me in the street as we were searching for some houses of less active members. I talked with him for a while as he followed us around and then asked him if we could teach him and his family. It turned out that he lives alone with his dad who is a less active hippie carpenter jewelry maker guy. We taught him and his dad and gave Dilon a Book of Mormon. Unfortunately they are moving to another city, but it was a cool lesson. Dilon was a golden investigator. He went to his Evangelical church by himself every week. He knew practically all of the teachings of the bible and understood them. We described to him where the Book of Mormon came from and he said well that makes sense because GOLD is a tyoe of metal that lasts for a long time. He was very cool. Now they plan on talking with missionaries in their new city.

Then on Saturday night I was praying with Elder Tello to end our daily planning session and I felt the desire to pray for a special blessing over the ward. I asked that all of the members, less actives, and investigators would feel the need to go to the chapel so that we could have a powerful and memorable sacrament meeting. Then afterwards I didn´t think much of it. The amazing thing was that that next day we had 134 people in the chapel and 4 of them were investigators! That´s about 40 more then the average we´ve been having. On top of that one of the Elders from the Quorum of the Seventies suprised the ward with a visit. It was a very powerful sacrament meeting.

Last night we had changes. They called us at about 11 and told us that the 4 of us would all be staying where we are. That we´re doing a good job and need to keep it up. I´m not going to lie, at first I was a little bummed. BUT afterward I prayed and slept on it and in the morning had a very powerful personal and companionship study. Elder Tello and I know that we can do more this change and we´re going to do it. One of our goals is to help all members to take an active part in the missionary work. We´re going to try and bring members to lessons with us every day. Nobody realizes how important it really is.

Well I love and miss each and every one of you. Thanks for all the emails, letters and packages. Please keep it up ;) You´re the best!

Love,
Elder Mooney