Temple Trip!

Dear Friends and Family:

Hooray for a new brother! I love you, Nathan!

This week, on Friday, we were able to go to the temple for the first time since the MTC. I've included a picture of my zone and another zone, with President and Sister Anderson in the middle. This is President and Sister Anderson's last week in the mission; President and Sister Richardson are coming in later this week, and we'll see them for the first time next Tuesday. It was a really great experience in the temple, and I felt like my perspective on life and the meaning of the gospel changed significantly.

Elder Bailey and I are getting along pretty well. We both enjoy completely different things for the most part, but we both like to read. In missionary work, the biggest struggle we've found so far is finding a lot of people who want to hear our message, or who want a scripture read to them occasionally, but who don't want to do anything or to commit to being baptized. We've resolved to be more in line with our purpose when we teach, so that it is very clear to people what we expect from them. If they are willing to act, then we will work with them; and if not, then we can spend our time looking for other people to teach.

We have had such a good week in terms of numbers. We've found a large number of new investigators, and we've had a lot of lessons. We did not, however, get many people to come to church.

So for this next week, Dylan is finally going to be baptized. He's had some problems these last two weeks, because of opposition by members of the family and also because of the recent death of his great-grandpa (who happened to be a Mormon, who would have guessed). But he is still solid and is preparing for this weekend.

I'm sorry I haven't been writing as much as I should have been. I'll send off some letters today.

Thanks,

Elder Slade