Samuel's Mission e-mail Aug 8, 2007

Everyone:

I realized when I looked at the mission calendar that I hadn't mentioned that we were going to have our temple day this week, so that's why this e-mail is late (like it says, it's not because I got shot). Anyways, I've really been enjoying my time here in Watts thus far. I actually don't really feel scared around here. Of course, we don't tract when the sun is getting low, and we generally steer clear of the "Projects", and there are almost always sirens in the distance, but on the whole, as long as you don't do anything against the rules, you're fine around here.

Starting with Tuesday of last week: Tuesday last week we had to get a new tire for our car since we managed to drive over a nail earlier on. We also tracted some, and we went to the Libro de Mormon (Book of Mormon) class that all the missionaries in the South Gate 2nd ward hold for investigators.

Wednesday of last week we tracted, visited an Hermana (Sister) to do a bit of service for her, and tried to visit people who weren't home (This activity seems to be a constant in missionary life, from my experience.)

On Thursday we taught the Williams family, a referral we contacted my first day here in Watts that we have pretty high hopes for. As we've been talking with them, it seems that one of the daughters actually had some of the missionary lessons before--she recognized 3 Nephi 11. Then we had our weekly planning, visited Norman, a member who's in a convalescent hospital in our area, and visited Sherri Thompson to arrange a time for her baptismal interview (we arranged it for Friday). Then we had our correlation meeting with the South Gate 2nd Ward (henceforth SG2, since I'm getting tired of typing South Gate 2nd Ward). Correlation for SG2 is interesting, since there are eight companionships serving in the ward area, so the correlation meetings are fairly lengthy.

Friday we had our District Meeting, and then we picked up a youth from the SG2 ward named Jesus (there's and accent mark on the u, but I don't know how to add that in this text box). He came with us while we tracted that day, and when we visited Sherri in the evening and told her that her interview had been moved to Saturday.

On Saturday Sherri got her baptismal interview with President Blackburn (the mission president), and she passed! Then we tracted most of the day, and visited a less-active family in the evening.

On Sunday we had our normal church meetings--the way we cover both SG2 and the SWLA (Southwest Los Angeles) Branch is that one of us goes to SG2 with either our district leader or his companion while the other one of us stays at SWLA with the other. Then in the afternoon, Sherri got baptized! The baptismal service went very well--we even had good support from the branch, which is apparently rare due to the small size of the SWLA branch.

On Monday we tracted a lot, and tried to visit people who weren't home again. Yesterday (Tuesday) we went up to the mission home so that Elder Allred could have a temple recommend interview (he looked at his recommend and realized it had expired at the end of July, so he needed a new one before today), and then in the evening we had the Libro de Mormon class again.

Today we went to the temple and washed and waxed our car.

Elder Samuel Stephens