Things here are going well! Were finally seeing the fruits of all of our work and boy its sweet. We went out on Sunday with members and visited a lot of less active members and that was a big help. We’re having success finding people and teaching them, we have a baptism planned for this week so were hoping that everything is ok and we can finally have one this change. We have been blessed and have been finding People Street contacting but this just isn’t enough. We need the help of our branch and we need references! References are the best way to teach people! I just wish everyone would understand the importance of this. This week I planned a capture the flag game with our branch so hopefully we have a good attendance and we can unite the branch some more. We have a good spiritual part planned in it so we will see how that goes, and I’ll tell next week what it was if it ends up a success.

Love, Cole

This past week was pretty good for me. Not a whole lot happened over here but something interesting happened at church on Sunday. So we don’t have a ward in this area, it’s a branch. They told me and my companion right away when we got here that they wanted to be a ward so bad and they were doing everything they could to become one which I found out later that they aren’t doing anything at all to become one. For them to become a ward they have to have a regular assistance of 125 or more people every Sunday for 3 months and have 24 active priesthood holders paying tithing. They have been having around 101 in assistance and progressing but this last Sunday they had 45, sad huh? And we hear this next Sunday will be worse because of the elections here. But the Priesthood that was there was 5 Elders including me and my companion. The worst part of it all is that we have 271 less actives in our ward! That is crazy. If we reactivated them we could have a ward and a branch. I talked with them about that on Sunday and it seemed like a huge shock to them. We’re trying to help them out but I’m not sure if they can. We don’t have a secretary and both of the counselors to the President are less active so this means that we have to fulfill those callings. So we might be those counselors and secretary by next Monday on top of our duties as missionaries and finding people. This branch is already a lot of work and will be so I’m wondering if I was put here for a reason, because Dad taught me how wards should run! I’m glad he taught me what he did; maybe he knew something I didn’t!

We should be having a baptism this next week but they guy has some crazy ideas. He thinks he has been called of God to make a machine that will make humans better. All you have to do is put love, patience, charity and things like that in it as well as the person and it will make them perfect. We’re trying to explain to him we can’t be perfect but he has the desire to learn and be baptized and he agrees with everything we’ve been saying. So with him I hope we can unpollute his mind. I thought we had a weird family but ha not at all, I’ve seen some way crazy weird here.

Not much else is going on here just one last thing. Last night we watched a movie as a branch, only like 5 people were there but it was called courageous. There was a part when the daughter of a man died and he was talking to his preacher and the preacher said are you going to be mad about the time you could have had with her or happy for the time that you did have with her. This made me really think how lucky I am to have had the first 19 years of my life with my father. I actually knew him, I can remember him, he was able to teach me a lot of things, I learned from him. I know if he was still here I would learn a lot more but I learned a lot from him and will continue to even if he isn’t here physically. I’m so grateful for the time I’ve had on this earth with him and all of my family, I’m so blessed!