Semana Treinta y Siete [Week 37]: Alma 5

[In response to Mom & Dad's letters...] Sounds like Hong Kong is pretty cool! I would love to see some of the things like that peak and the monastery in the future, but I'm happy where I am :) That picture was from the Derenthalls, they are an awesome family here! Those other elders are the Norwood English elders. [There were no new photos on Google Drive and no photos attached to the email, so we haven't seen any photos yet.] And it's cool that you got to help with a conference; it's always nice to have food at those :) Speaking of which, our mission will be getting bigger in July! We will get the Dayton East and Toledo stakes, so our mission is going to be huge, but we won't be getting very many more missionaries. It's gonna be crazy, and crazy awesome! As far as Spanish goes, the Dayton Spanish elders already live and work in Dayton East, but Toledo is a possibility, I guess we will find out in July! So that's exciting :)

Do you take your investigators to the English ward and translate for them? Yep! It's pretty fun. I've never done it before but I feel like it went pretty well! There is a Spanish 'group' and a bunch of members speak Spanish, but for sacrament meeting we translate. :)

How many families/ investigators do you currently teach? We have about 6 main families we are working with right now. 4 are connected very closely with investigators, but they are all somehow connected to investigators. We have the daughter of a recent convert who may want to be baptized, and a Colombian couple [who] really like the Church as well. Also, a family from Mexico, and I taught their extended family in my last area! He's a lot different, but it's super cool to meet with him! Also, there is the wife of a less active member who is somewhat interested. She speaks mostly English, and he speaks mostly Spanish. Not totally sure how that happened, but they seem happy so it works for us! I'm visiting Socorro [Relief Society] a lot too to help her continue to learn, so that's a lot of fun. :)

Our new area is awesome! First, I've been really diving into the scriptures, more than ever before in my life, and it's changed me a ton! I love the Gospel so much, I can't express it all in an email. Our area is Norwood/Cincinnati, so basically we cover Cincinnati and the surrounding areas! It's pretty sweet! We serve in an English ward, and we translate, as I mentioned above. There are a ton of missionaries here! The wards were going to combine, but instead they have upped the missionary effort here! We used to cover Norwood in my last area, so I know a few people down here, and it was an area in the past, but we are restarting it a ton. Luckily Elder Gonzalez was trained here and spent like 5 months in this area, so he has some good knowledge too. So we are reopening it, it's quite the task, but the ward is insanely supportive! They are really missionary-focused right now, so we are receiving a lot of support. Our teaching pool is a bit sparse, but we have some really solid families, especially ___, the daughter of a recent convert, and _______, whose sister and brothers are investigators that I taught in my last area. It's basically the greatest place ever here. I pray multiple times a day asking for a baptism this transfer, and for the ability to find people who are ready to receive the gospel. We have seen some miracles, and I'm really just so happy here!

The mission got smartphones this week, except for me... and a couple others. Mine is here now though, and I'll be getting it tonight! So emailing will probably be a bit easier in the future, and I'm excited to use some of the great new resources we have! There are a few small things that could be improved with the area book planner app if you want to take a look, Dad. ;) Just some features that would be nice and a bug sometimes when we try to change an address haha, I really like it though. It puts all of our investigators and members on a map that is actually downloaded to our phone, so we don't need a GPS and we can visit much more efficiently! Gospel Library is also super useful. So phones rock, and I'll have mine tonight! I'm super stoked! Well, I kinda forgot what else I was going to say at this point. Soooo, mission life is good life!

Love,

Elder Liddle