March 10, 2010 email

Hey Family/Friends, Email time is really limited. 1 hr 15 min once a week, so I'm going to send an e-mail out to the whole family. I don't have Terry's e-mail and I don't have Janelle's e-mail so if anyone could send those addresses that would be great. If you wouldn't mind forwarding this e-mail to them that would be appreciated also. As far as whats going on here, we have 2 baptisms scheduled so far. My goal is 1 baptism a week. A transfer is 6 weeks, so I would need 6 baptisms per transfer to hit the goal. Right now, it only looks like we are going to get 3 - 4 baptisms for this transfer, so I will have to step it up to hit the goal. Pretty awesome for a first transfer though. It was definitely not us, but it was God who brought us so much success. Hopefully Heavenly Father will help me to hit our goal for this transfer; if not, to make up the difference next transfer. Its really exciting though. One of our baptisms was a 60 + year old woman from Afghanistan. She has been walking to the local LDS church for 6 months and has already been taught the gospel by her friend (a woman from Iraq who worked as a translator. She had been in the United States for 20 + years.) She knows very little English so her friend had to translate for us/her. We have people like that showing up all over the place. Definitely God, not us. My goal is pretty out there; 1 baptism per week = over 100 baptisms before I come home. I'm going to do everything I can to hit it though, and then pray to the Lord to fill in the (massive) difference. We are very busy. The only way we tract is if we schedule it, because there is never free time to do it otherwise. There are always investigators/less active members to see. We follow our schedule exactly. At most, we may start or end something 1 - 2 minutes early/late but rarely. The mission has gotten much stricter. You do not do anything that your told not to. Like chewing gum; not allowed in public (unless you are in your apartment... meaning sleeping, eating or studying, so why would you be chewing gum anyways?) And the rules are enforced here. You do what your told, and there is more than enough leadership around (its Salt Lake) to enforce all rules. We have apostles all around us and Thomas S. Monson's house is in our mission, which is part of the reason standards are so high. Could you also send me Grandma Tomlinson's e-mail? I heard that she is in the hospital and I'm worried. Not that she will get my e-mail anyways while she's there, but it would be nice to let her know whats going on once she gets out. Anyways, I hope everyone is doing good. I love all of you and pray that everything is going well. If I knew my address, I would send it right now, but I forgot to grab the paper it was on. I will send it to you later (no later than next week's e-mail.) Again, I love all of you and will pray for you. Sterling