June 27th and it is now HOT

Dearest Loved-ones,

On saturday we had a baptism (see attatched picture). It went well. Because the faunt at the church was being difficult we held the baptism at a (indoor) pool of a member (se attatcher picture). In order to get to this pool one must first enter the master bedroom, then enter the master closet. When you enter the master closet you will find yourself in a short hall way with 2 doors to you left, 2 doors to your right, and one at the end of the hall. Enter the one at the end and you will find yourself in the "private oasis" that we turned into the baptistry. Yep. It is a really nice house.

The baptism went very well though. She was so excited.

Last week we started talking to these 3 guys in our aptartment complex. We had them read the intro to the book of mormon were it says it is "the most correct book on earth" and the got really excited. They said "That means that book is more correct then the Bible! And it's shorter so it gets more to the point." I just wanted to respond and say "you said it, not us." We met with them again and they said they would come to church, and they did! well 2 of them. A sister in our branch has really been longing and praying that this branch will turn into a ward and then a stake. That was a promise to one of her children in thier patriartical blessing. When These 2 potential-priesthood-holders showed up she was just so ready to step it up and welcom them. We committed them and the other guy to be baptized on the 11th of july. We are excited.

We had 4 other potential-priesthood-holders investigators come to church yesterday and a couple less-active-prospective-elders too. It is great! We are deffinitely seeing the hand of the Lord in our work this week.

Well I love you all,

-von

p.s. The other pictures are of a park that has a "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" theme up in Kingsport. That park is called "Daral's Dream" and Warrior's Parth State Park. I might have spelt Daral wrong and it might not be a state park. Oh well, it was pretty cool.

June 13th

Dear Arizona!

Our trip to Nashville went well, though we didn't get to go to the temple. In our exodus out of Knoxville and the rest of east TN we used alot of miles on our cars. We got a carter bus and a few other 15 passenger vans and headed on over. It was blimin hot there!! We were all sitting there melting in the chaple waiting for Elder Ballard to come in and some one walks in and say "Elder Ballard has givin approvel for the elders to remove thier suit coats." so we all did quite willingly, but even then it was still misrable. The Apostle came in without his coat, said a few jokes like "why are you all standing? Is it cooler that way?" and told us to all be seated.

We were instructed to talk to 10 new people (other than tracting) a day. We also were instructed to have concentrated study time. Also to take members to invite friends to church/FHE/lessons/whatever. This will help us in our work.

Elder Platt and I have been striving to live more concentrated lives as missionaries.

Sunday we met a lady who use to work with a member of our ward. We asked her what she is looking for in life and she said nothing really. She said the she felt that her purpose right now is to help her son be happy and good and teach him were to turn for guidence, God and the scripures. So we showed her that the first few principles in the restoration pamphet were just that, blessing families and prophets/scripure is to help us do that. We told her about prophets and Joseph Smith and she said that she would be scared to follow someone who might be a scam artist and that she would need some thing to help her know it was true. So we told her about the BoM that it is there to help us know if he is true or not. We are going there tonight to teach her and her son with the member.

I hope all is going well for you people out there!
love ya!

-that kid in the south