Heat Check (?)

Malo Soifua!!!

Today on the Elder Hill Show:

 ** We went to Olive Garden as a district, and it was super fun

 ** Favorite experience train contacting ever: teaching three homies on the train all at once about the BoM (one if them is running for governor of New York)

 ** We went to dinner with Indira and Patrick on Saturday, and it was AMAZING

 ** The week as a whole was really good BUT (↓↓)

 ** The end of the week was kinda weird, ngl

Quick request to start this off. Our mission has a goal of baptizing 113 people this month. As of last night, we were at 70, with 47 more people preparing for baptism this weekend! Please please keep these friends (and everyone else preparing or thinking about it) in your prayers. Pray that they will overcome opposition and obstacles to be able to make covenants with God and receive the blessings of the Holy Spirit.

Anyways that's my little soapbox request. Thank you all so much for your help. And now, on to the rest of the week:

District Council was on Elder Horton's birthday this past Wednesday, so both to celebrate that but also just to be epic, Elder and Sister Shiley took our district to lunch at Olive Garden. We had a great time, and the food was delicious. Nothing super crazy happened, just good times with good friends.

We were train contacting on our way to the church, and I experienced an epic encounter. This black guy, Kevin, was kinda looking at me from a little down the train car, so I walked over and sat next to him. We started talking, and I learned that he has read the BoM before and he wanted a copy of the Pearl of Great Price so he could read the book of Abraham. Unusual conversation haha. I realized partway through that the two guys sitting across from us were traveling together with my new friend Kevin. One of them was Kevin's uncle Derrick, who is currently campaigning to be governor of New York, and Chris, a good friend of theirs who's living with them as those three travel and campaign together. They all seemed super chill, and they're down to learn more about the BoM! They can't make it to church this week because they'll be in Syracuse, but they said they should be able to come this upcoming week! Super epic to find/teach all three of them on the train.

Saturday was a weird day (more in the next couple paragraphs), but the evening was epic. Indira and Patrick took us out to dinner at a SUPER GOOD Thai place near the church. It was definitely out of my price range, but they insisted on treating us haha. We each got appetizers and drinks and I ordered a Golden Salmon Steak, which was absolutely phenomenal. There was a lot of food, so we packed it up and had leftovers for dinner the next day. So good haha. See pics below (and Mom, it had mAnGOeS).

So as far as finding goes, we're literally going insane. Elder Blackham and I found 45 new people this week, which is my new all-time high. I also set a new all-time for how many people I found by myself in one day with eleven! Now that's crazy in and of itself, but what made it even crazier was that it happened in about two hours of street contacting. Also our mission found over 2800 people this week, so that's hype. God brings blessings, and He brings them in abundance.

Soooooo, here's the other part of that story. By Saturday morning we had found 43 people, had 20 confirmed for church, and had 11 on baptismal date. We realized we needed to grind out some contacting, so we spent the entire day just calling & texting our people to confirm for lessons and church as well as to gauge interest in meeting with us. By the end of Sunday (so roughly 36 hours later), we had found 2 people in two days, which is good but could have been a lot higher, we only had 2 people come to church, and we only have 4 on baptismal date. It was really frustrating (albeit not super surprising), and we spent some time during a companion study trying to figure out how to get our friends to stick around after we find them. It was weird to see so many people just fall off the face of the planet, but I guess that's just how life goes. We've got the skills and the desire and the plans, so I'm actually pretty excited to grind it out this week and see what we can do to improve our teaching pool.

Mafaufauga faaleagaga:

Alofa tele lava atu ia outou uma,

Elder Hill

Ata:

• Random huge crowd of high schoolers by the Mall (we couldn't see what they were all yelling about and recording, but it seemed wild haha)
• Elder Fanning and me (window pic and selfie)
• Queens & Subways
• Suuuuper good food with Indira & Patrick
• Cute pics of Elder Blackham and myself on the subway platform (day and night)