The work is flourishing!!!

Hello everyone.

 This week was   sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good. Actually it was a litttle slow lesson wise but we have tons of investigators soooo close to baptism.

 So I'll start with Eric who was baptized yesterday. First of all, it was a GREAT baptism. Super spiritual, support from the ward, the only part was while Elder Johnson was changing I was asked to play the piano while we sang hymns and waited for them to change. It was a little butchered......but I did alright. Super good baptism.

We then taught a woman named Yolanda. She is probably the most prepared investigator I've ever taught on my mission. Because there is opposition in all things, she also has one of the biggest challenges as an investigator. She and her family go to a Born-Again Christian church, very faithfully. Her family is way against us teaching her, but who are they to deny her salvation?!  Anyways we had her on date for a while then one day her daughter came to the door and said, "She doesn't want to be between two churches and doesn't want you to keep coming over. Thanks." Slammed door. We knew she was a lying sack because the night before Yolanda told us that while she was reading 1 Nephi 8 (Lehi's dream) she had the words, "No te preocupes por tu familia." "DON'T WORRY ABOUT YOUR FAMILY!"

So we finally contacted her after like a month and talked to her. Her daughter, came into the room and sat down randomly, so we were like, "Yolanda, did you ever say you didn't want us to come back over?"

"NO! Why would I ever say that?! I know what you're teaching me is true!"

"Ooooohhhhhhhhh. Somebody told us you didn't want us to come back over......oh well."

WHAMMY!!!!! BOOM!!!! EAT IT SATAN!!!!! It was cool. She came to church yesterday. And she'll be baptized on the 17th. 

Then the Peña family also came to church. Then the Taylors came to church. Then Juan Roman came to church. The Rafael and his wife came to church. We had 8 eight EIGHT EiGhT investigators to church! Super cool. Most I've had in my mission. All of our investigators on date came to church. We're gonna go swimming hardcore this month. Back to investigators. Peña's are great. They're on date for the 17th of this month. We don't really need to teach anything else. She just wants to set it in advance so her hubby can come. Righteous choice. The Taylors, are a white family we're teaching because we cover a English/Spanish unit in Borrego Springs. If you want to go on lds.org and look at the boundaries they are ridiculously huge. So ya. We cover the city of Coachella, Mecca, Thermal, Salton City, and Borrego Springs, a HUUGE area. Few details about investigators… Juan Roman is a novio (boyfriend) of one of the members here. He has wanted to be baptized for a while. He just hasn't been able to get work off. At church he texted us and was like can I be baptized today?! We were like, you should probably invite your fam, and your novia (girlfriend) works today.....so we'll postpone it till next week. Rafael got off Sunday and came with his wife. He comes to church when he can, has a desire to follow Christ, so we'll baptize him on the 10th.

So I had my first ZLC (Zone Leader Council). We all go to Riverside, and talk about goals, zone plans, goals for the mission, and cool stuff. We have set the goal for like 1500 baptisms for the mission for the year of 2013. The year of 2012 we had like 737. 2011 we had 630. We're gonna fetchin do it. This work is the greatest.

The work is flourishing. We just got to focus on finding investigators while we baptize our teaching pool so it's more of an escalator rather than an elevator.

 I have the best family ever. I love you!!!

-Elder Matt Dial