This week Elder Bennett and Elder Cozzens went to Kitchener(like 2 hours away) for the leadership conference which lasted for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. That left me in Walkerton with the greenie Elder Atwood. And it was just us, with me driving. It was an interesting learning experience, because I got to walk in Elder Bennett's shoes. Elder Atwood didn't talk much when we were out finding people so I did most of the talking, which was very new to me and pretty difficult. I also had to do most of the planning and phone calls, and I was in charge of getting us out of the apartment on time and getting to appointments on time, which was harder than I thought it would be. That was 3 days of stress-filled labor, and I felt like I learned a lot from that.
I forgot to mention last week that 2 of our investigators attended church last week, Leah and Jennifer. Leah was really shy and I don't think she had the holy-smokes-this-really-is-the-true-church experience that we expected her to have. And after like 3 months of trying to get her to come that was a bi disappointing. But Jennifer was a social butterfly. I don't remember if I ever mentioned Jennifer so I'll describe her real quick. She was dating less-active(but not inactive) member in our branch. A while ago we taught said less-active and Jennifer happened to be there. She ended up being interested and wanted to learn "the basics" of our church. So we've been teaching her and she's really gotten into the whole culture of our church and she's had pretty good spiritual experiences with the Book of Mormon. She's been to church 3 times so far, gone to a few of the branch's social activities, and she has a baptismal date. The problem, and I've learned that there is always a problem, is that the less-active she was dating has broken up with her while we were teaching her. And the less-active thinks she might be doing this to get closer to him. So there may or may not be a motivational issue there.
Something really sad happened this week. There was a 5-year-old girl in our branch named Savannah who had cancer for a long time, and she passed away this week. It's so sad. But at the same time it's amazing to see how Savannah's family and friends have been able to find peace in the Gospel. We know where she is, and we know that once she is resurrected she will be able to live in the celestial kingdom with her Heavenly Father. And that's one of the greatest sources of peace we can have in this life. Like birth, death is a step in the Plan of Salvation. It is hard to deal with because we have trouble seeing past it, but it is ordained of God and it's something that we all need to go through.
This next week is the last week of the transfer and I'm 98% sure that I'm leaving. The zone leaders called Elder Bennett last week and asked Elder Bennett if I was ready to go senior companion. I was the only one in the district that they asked about. And last transfer night President Brower told Elder Bennett straight-up that he was staying for 6 months. Elder Cozzens should be leaving too, because he has been in his area for 6 months. So this week I'll just be trying to learn all that I can from Elder Bennett because I know there's a lot that I can still learn from him. That's something I realized when he was gone for 3 days.
Anyway I hope everything is going great down in the States, have a great week. And don't mail any letters until you get my next email, because they will take forever to get to me if they go to my old address. I hope you like the pictures, I feel like I should be taking more of them.
Love you all
--Elder Wade
