Hey y'all,

Pretty solid week this week with a lot of good experiences! I can't believe July is almost over; it's weird for me to hear about the upcoming school year. It's pretty normal for missionaries to use major sports seasons to measure how long they've been out, and so I've had a college football season, a world series, a SuperBowl, and an NBA championship (can't forget about the summer olympics, either!). Just coming up on the second and final college football season is crazy for me! I can remember getting Utah/PAC12 updates weekly in emails from Dad and packages from the family up in Logandale...I even had their schedule taped up on the wall of the trailer. Pretty soon we'll be having the annual TurkeyBowl again; not quite sure how we'll be doing that with so many more missionaries than before. Anyways, back to the important stuff:

We've found some new people to teach this week, and we're really stoked about it. When Elder Herlin and I spoke in church, we mentioned that one of the best ways to introduce us to their friends was to have us over for dinner and invite their neighbors. A woman approached us while we were still on the stand and invited us over for this past Tuesday, to eat with them and meet her neighbor. We ended up teaching a lesson to her that night and she committed to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it! It was great to be able to find someone new to teach, and even better that a member had taken up our challenge and saw the blessings from doing so. It's awesome to have great members that get personally involved with the teaching process and bring their close friends to us.
 
Later on during the week, Elder Herlin and I went on exchanges with one of our district leaders in the zone. I was with his companion, a brand new missionary, for the day. Since he was new and hadn't had a ton of experience, I wanted to help him with some things I had personally needed a lot of help with as a new missionary: contacting people on the street (something I didn't do until about my 6 month mark). On one of the first doors we knocked on, a nice 30 year old woman invited us in, gave us water, sat down on the couch and asked "so how does this work?". A little confused at the question, we asked "how does...what...work?". She responded, "Well, I've let you in and given you water. Aren't you supposed to teach me something?". This new elder and I taught her about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and we had a great impromptu lesson. We'll be meeting with her again early this next week. Leaving the house on a spiritual high, I had to explain to my temporary companion, "that doesn't necessarily happen EVERY time you go tracting...", but now that I think about it, why shouldn't it? Anyways, great week, good things are happening, we have some great weather and nothing to complain about!

Love you tons!
 
Jesse


The Lakes Zone Leaders. Elders Dowdle & Herlin