August Already!

Hello all,

Haha no I'm not getting trunky from hearing all the news from home.  There's been plenty to focus on here and I've been trying hard to focus on just those things.  Hearing what's going on at home is nice and it doesn't bother me.

Although I will say that it's CRAZY to think that Scott is hitting his year mark and I didn't really think about how much was left of my mission until you said 10 months just now...  That was kinda trippy haha.  It might be best not to mention how little time I have left, rather how long I've served... it might be the same in the end but rephrasing it has a different effect on my mind cause it proposes a different view of the work, i.e. focusing on keep working hard till the end rather than you're almost done... does that make sense?

In any case I was talking to a member this past week who asked how long I had been out for and I said "14 months"  and he said, "Oh, almost done then!"  and I didn't like it put that way haha I just said "Well, we won't talk about it."

Anywho, mission life has been going well!  We've been working like crazy the past few weeks here just trying to get the area started and it finally payed off this past week.  We had dinner with a part-member family (the husband and kids are nonmembers, but the wife is a member) who had been meeting with the missionaries for most of this year and in my lesson this past week Elder M. asked them what the husband thought of the temple and he said "Well, that's our goal."  So I explained what our purpose as missionaries was and I asked if there would be anything holding them back from being baptized and he said "I don't think so."  So I committed them both for baptism on August 11th and they accepted!  We were so excited this will be the first baptisms that Kealakekua has seen since March, and it would be such a big step for their family!  So then Sunday rolls around and I start to get this feeling like  we need to ask the husband the baptismal interview questions before our meeting on this Wednesday.  So after church we got to his house and start to go over the questions with him.  It turns out that the missionaries who had been meeting (numerous times according to the teaching record) with them before us, had not been teaching him any of the commandments!  So he had not known about the Law of Tithing or the Word of Wisdom.  OUCH!

So we go over both of those and he explained that he would be willing to keep the Law of Tithing and that his only problem with the Word of Wisdom was drinking coffee.  So that was a blessing in and of itself, and then he said he'd be willing to give up coffee!  Big blessing!  But the problem is that typically baptismal candidates need to be living the Word of Wisdom for three weeks prior to baptism.  So I talked to President Dalton and the only way he can be baptized this weekend or next weekend is if our Bishop gives the OK.  So we'll see what happens this week, keep praying for us please!

And then we've also been working with a girl and she's almost ready to be baptized, her only hesitancy is that she doesn't want to be baptized and then go to college and play basketball where her coach might not give her a couple hours off on Sunday:(  So we've encouraged her to talk to her coach in advance but our window of opportunity with her is coming to a close at the end of the month when her sister, who is a recent convert, also leaves to go back to college.  So basically I'm stressing out and really praying hard that these two things will go through.  

Also because I'm getting the feeling that I'm going to be transferred in two weeks...  I've never stayed in an area for more than 4.5 months (three transfers)  and in 2 weeks I will make four and a half.  So I feeling like I'm just running out of time in all sorts of contexts and it's stressing me out, but making me work harder too which is good.  My Bishop says that he wants to request President Dalton keep me here another couple transfers haha.

Well I think that's it for this week.  Sorry no new pictures yet:(  I've been trying to be better at that haha.

I Love you all sooo much.  PLEASE keep praying for our investigators here,

Talk to y'all next week;) Love, Elder Brooksby