We Are Pumped!

Let me tell you about my new companion! His name is Elder Jolley and he's from Vermont! He was the only member in his High School! In fact, there is only 1 stake in the entire state of vermont. The strength of the church here in Arizona is super impressive to him. He just turned 19. He really has the greenie fire. He has hit the ground running and is already a very capable missionary. We've decided to skip most of our lunch our and eat as quick as we can so we can make extra appointments. The members already love him and trust us as their missionaries. As his trainer I'm learning a ton from him. His excitement and enthusiasm reminds me of the energy I came into the field with and it has relight my motivation for hard core discipline and diligence. ;) We have set high goals for our area and are already achieving some of them. We are maintaining exact obedience. All I can say is AWESOME. I'm just so happy to be working so hard with such a great companion.

In our first lesson together, we put an investigator on date for January 25th. WE ARE PUMPED! This man has been investigating for years and all it took was asking him what he thought his wife (who wants to get baptized soon) would think if he got baptized on January 25th. He thought about it and then committed.

We had the great opportunity to do a Q&A with a large group of seniors from one of the prep schools in the area. They had some random questions like, "Why is God represented as a man?" or, "What's the mormon culture like?" It was really cool to answer their questions and there seemed to be some genuine interest! The group was put together by one of our young men who was taking all these peers through the Gilbert Temple Open house so he just had them show up to his house an hour early to have a Q&A with us!

I wish I could tell you more about my week and my mission! I'm SO busy and I'm doing SO good!! Not only is this the best 2 years but it's the freaking funnest 2 years! I really love talking to strangers. I like finding new jokes to make them laugh and I like the challenge of making it comfortable quickly.

I love you so much Mom!! Have a great week!

Love Elder Janis