01/11/2016

  Hello everyone! I hope you all had a great week since I last wrote. My week was good. On Tuesday, we had the usual quiet day, with meetings and lessons and English class. On Wednesday, I said goodbye to Elder Heo, who left for Antsirabe. I went on missionary exchanges with another district until Thursday, when our new companions woul arrive. Elder Bowen and I were companions for the day. He's a cool guy! And we had a great time together. On Thursday afternoon, Elder Iata (from Vanuatu) arrived. He and I will be teaching together throughout this transfer. 

  So this week, we set goals of how we want Ambohipo's missionary work to progress this transfer.  Our main goal is to try and find two new families each week to teach.  That will be a challenge. Until this week, I had not really taught a new investigator for a while. So, even though going from door to door is something I am not a real fan of, we went from door to door this past week (no one invited us into their home) and we plan on going from door to door more often. 

   On Saturday, while we were talking about the events of the day, we got a call from someone who said they wanted to learn and so we told the person that we could meet them that day. When we went to meet with him wecasked him if we could teach him today he said that he wanted to learn at the church, so we walked to church so we could teach him. He showed up for church the next day and attended all of the meetings! I hope he will continue to progress.

  The missionaries and the ward mission leader (Ambohipo Ward) are planning an activity where we will be training and teaching for the ward missionaries and then later an activity for the less actives, investigators, and recent converts (Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration). Members are only invited if they bring a name of someone that the missionaries can teach. So hopefully that motivates the members to search for people who are prepared to hear the gospel. We are also planning on giving service to members in an effort to try to build more friendship and trust. The ultimate goal of all of this is member referrals.

Some mail did arrive this week. I got some Christmas cards from family ( Britt, Aunties Sarah and Bessie and others from the Callihans, the Cornwells, and the Batchelors. Thank you all so much! I appreciate the Christmas wishes.

Right now, the power is going off and then it returns and it goes off again. So if I do not send this email now, it may never be sent. Sorry for having the email so soon.

 Have a great week, everyone!

Elder Pinson