June 29th

Well, my new companion is Elder Barney, he is a really great missionary. We have set some similar goals as when I was with Elder Ficklin, they seem to be working pretty well. We had our first lesson with Stacy - our miracle investigator, last Saturday. She accepted an invitation to be baptized on July 11th. She came to church yesterday and brought her 84 year old mother with her, who may be just as interested with our church as Stacy is. Stacy's 12 year old daughter is extremely shy, but I think she will come around in a little bit. We got Elijah to church, but not the rest of the Johnson family, It will happen eventually.

Transfers

So,  Elder Ficklin is going to leave and I am staying, he was only here for 6 weeks, wow. I didn't really get to know him that well but I feel like we were the most unified out of the three companions I have had. Especially when we discussed what we wanted to do with the area and it somehow showed as we picked up a total of 11 new investigators this transfer.

This week was eventful being that we were flagged down by a woman named Stacy, she just really unloaded about her situation and told us all about how she had heard great things about the Church and that she needed help. At first I kinda thought "Oh no, not another one of these" but as she kept going on about her situation she expressed a desire to join our Church to help her daughter become more active in her life. and she knows that the Church provides a way to do that through the youth programs. Anyways we set up a lesson for this coming Friday.  She has been calling us since last Thursday, that being when she first flagged us down, with a lot of great questions about the Book of Mormon, she is currently the only "investigator" reading it right now.  It is really great to see that the Book of Mormon really is the key to helping an investigator progress. She also said that her mom who is 84 and was stuck in her catholic ways wants to learn more about the Church, wow.

Love you guys and hope you are doing well

Love,
-Elder Throckmorton

p.s. I have failed to mention the fact that it is way above 100 F everyday now and only gets down to about 90 every night. Last Thursday it hit 117 F and it was 106 F at 10pm that night. This is an Arizona summer I guess.  Also, we keep our house at a chilly 85 degrees.  I guess it feels chilly after coming in from 117, but it sure does make it hard to sleep.

Almost 10 Investigators at Church

So, we picked up yet another 2 investigators, they are black as well and say funny things like "Oh my loafus" and "What is they name?" and most exciting, they want to get baptized. They were a media referral and just recently moved in like 2 weeks ago. They said they were planning on coming to church as well as Alice and Jimmy, and Duane and his family; sadly none of them showed up, but they will next week.

Only In A Week

So this week was pretty long and I can't really remember a lot of it, but we found 2 new investigators by the names of Alice and Jimmy, who lived back East in West Virginia then started moving west ever so slowly until they ended up in Arizona, where they now live with one of their daughters. They have a very Southern accent and are pretty funny because of how they act with regards to God and Jesus Christ, Singing praises and shouting alleluia every so often as we are teaching. They haven't heard of the LDS church and they are a part of  The Seventh Day Adventist with a female prophet, needless to say that she doesn't really understand the whole "priesthood for males" thing but I have faith that she will overcome that as she reads from the Book of Mormon. We are planning on going over "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" with her tomorrow, they both seem pretty solid.

We were going to have around 10 investigators at church yesterday but for one reason or another none of them showed up and no one answered their doors at all yesterday, I guess those days just happen haha.

Baptism For Michael

Saturday was actually more interesting than it needed to be, not stressful just interesting. We had the Cloud building (one with a font) scheduled for Saturday, the building coordinator told us that our little "magic key" should work for that building, which is just outside of our stake. Well we showed up about an hour and a half early to fill up the font and found to our surprise that our key didn't work. After about 15 phone calls we tracked down some missionaries who had some keys that would work. The font takes about an hour and fifteen minutes to fill and we had 40 minutes until the baptism. The baptism went well, one of the priests from the ward got to baptize him, in a half full font. It was mildly entertaining witnessing the baptism, because Michael was forced to be fully immersed in the water, it took 20 seconds, I thought maybe he was being drowned haha! The same priest who baptized him got to confirm Michael a member of the church, it was pretty cool.

We have a new member who just recently decided to come back to church,  his name is Brad, he is pretty awesome. He served in the military and hasn't been to church since he was 10 so he doesn't know a lot of the doctrine, it is kind of like teaching a non-member and is actually fun.

I would say that Elder Ficklin and I get along a lot better than any other companion I have had so far, and the work has been going so much better too. Not to say I didn't get along with the last two, because I did, just to say that we get along better. We are more obedient than I have ever been on my mission and we have been blessed with a sense of success that I know could only be found through exact obedience.

-Elder Throckmorton