Monday, August 18, 2008

May 28, 2008 - Now drop and give me 20! Ok... one, we're going for one.

Hello everyone!

Things are going well out here in dusty Horizon. Last night we started a basketball game and invited five investigators and 4 members... and they all came! It's amazing the way you can beat your head against a wall for months on end doing everything possible, pouring your heart and soul out, to try to get your investigators to church and end up with 2-3 on any given Sunday, but you start one basketball game and invite five people once... and they all show up! Unbelievable! We're going to start trying to make activities at the church a larger part of our work here.

We had a little bit of an adventure on Saturday. We went over to an investigator's house at 8:30 at night to invite her to church, but instead of investigators we found smoke! There was a pretty good amount of smoke coming out the front door. By looking through the windows we surmised that it wasn't a HUGE deal, probably just something left in the oven for a few hours too long. We saw their neighbors sitting outside and decided to go ask them if they had a key or something so that we could go inside and try to check it out. Well her neighbor freaked out when she saw the smoke and called 911 and said "My neighbor's house is on fire! please send someone, hurry!" Well the firemen came in a big truck, popped off the door and found... a roast that had been cooking for about 3 hours too long. We were right. The firemen weren't TOO happy to be called out for a burned roast. But anyways we took some pictures next to the fire engines and stuff. All in all it was pretty exciting.

Also, on Tuesday we had a zone meeting up in the mountains! We went to a little church retreat area in a town called Cloudcroft (or something like that). It was BEAUTIFUL! There were TREES! Seriously! This is President Higham's last round of zone meetings so he went out with a bang. We had an opportunity to go off by ourselves and pray in the woods and during that time I recieved enough spiritual energy to last me a year! It was AWESOME! I wish I could put into words the wonderful spirit that was at that meeting.

Besides that, we comitted 14 people to come to church this Sunday and had...1 Things are definitely looking up, though. We currently have six baptismal dates. The work is progressing but man is it hard to help people keep their comittments down here.

It's good to hear that Dad is doing so well! You're the man! Thanks for the email. That picture of the hardware is pretty cool... I had no idea it was so big! Could you get through metal detectors with that? I'm praying for you, and hope that you keep improving.

Bishop Jackson: Thanks for satisfying that particular curiosity. I figured you must have grown up on the West Side. I don't know if it was the same way back then, but it's VERY different from the rest of El Paso, and is more like Las Cruces than El Paso.

Well that's about all I have to say! I love you all and am so greatful to have such wonderful and spiritual friends and family. Thank you for your examples and your support.

Love,

Elder Ben

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