Fireside Follow-up

Happy Monday!

There's plenty to do and see here in Cincinnati, and I actually got a call a week and a half ago from Ryan Starks (recent convert from Wilmington) who had found out that I was in Cincinnati now. He said that he and Kim, his girlfriend/fiance who is also a member now, wanted to come down on a future P-day to spend the day with me! I'm guessing that will take place next week, so I'm pretty excited to see the sights with them here as well!

One of the places we will visit is the Reds Hall of Fame (big surprise), as well as a few other attractions.

This past week was BUSY!!!! We were able to contact 10 of the 26 referrals that we received from the fireside, and as of right now NONE of them have turned down a return appointment. Several of them were very excited when we came to their door, and we are looking forward to contacting the rest of them throughout this week. They are very well spread out in our area, so we know that we can go to any suburb and have plenty of work to do. We are also focusing on having more lessons with members present and also teaching the members a lot more.

This past week was difficult because we spent a great deal of time working on the referrals, but if anything we should get the members involved in that. We can only do so much by ourselves. With all that we have to do right now, it's very important that we maintain balance or else we will have less success. The members have been very gracious to us and have definitely helped us tremendously, but there is more work to be done. Interestingly enough, most of our PEC meeting yesterday was spent listening to the various leaders talk about how they struggle to friendship people outside of Church meetings. They used to have some get-togethers apparently, but it only involved the same 10 families.

Elder Kirk and I have been talking about this very thing lately and how to use activities as a means for finding new investigators. In my experience, it works!!!! So we're pretty excited for the Memorial Day picnic because that is a PERFECT opportunity for people to see that we are actually normal, even though we missionaries continue to be the oddballs no matter what the setting. :) Regardless, this is something we are going to pursue and we know that the Lord will bless us as we strive to make it a successful missionary-minded activity. Well, this letter is shorter than most but I think I summed up everything that I wanted to.

Thank you for continually increasing my spirituality through these letters as well as from your prayers. Have a great week, and keep counting your blessings!