Elder Andrew Peña

This week was amazing! Our mission president is inspired and continues to guide us to our goals! We set a goal this week as a mission to have over 200 individuals with a baptismal date! We were at 153 and that is about where we stay consistently as a mission. The most we have had would be around 180 at a time so with this goal we sent out miracles from companionships throughout the mission and missionaries setting baptismal dates with people and sent them to everyone to hear the miracles! We also followed up every night with who had set baptisms and every night we would let the assistants know of how many our zones had so they could inform us everyday how many we had. It stayed 153 until Tuesday and Wednesday it was at 163 and on Thursday it jumped to 191 and then Saturday to 208 and that is where we are currently! We've over achieved that goal and is the most the mission has seen all year! We have 681 individuals that have been baptized and our zone we had 4 baptisms our goal as a zone was to have 30 investigators with a baptism date and we had 29! Our goal this week is to have 35. As a companionship, Elder Whitworth and I had a goal to have three ( we had one at the beginning of the week ) and now we have 6! One of the miracles that we saw is we had a lesson with Micheal and Autumn and invited them to be baptized and Micheal said no and that he did not want to and Autumn said she would think about it. They are 14 and 13 years old. We had a lesson two days later and talked about baptism and taught why it was so important and invited them to be baptized and they accepted on November 28th, we also have 3 others for November 28th that may have to be pushed back to December, that is Robert Ricky and Dominique Moore. Alexandria, one of our investigators, when I first got to the area we were biking and we talked to Alexandria just outside her home and she was singing "baby don't hurt me" and she didn't stop to talk to us she just said sure come on by. So we went by and we had a great lesson and committed her to come to church and she said she would. She never came so we invited her to come to conference and again she didn't come. Time went on where we struggled with teaching her. She would miss appointments and wasn't home but then we were on an exchange and she stopped my companion and who he was with and told us to come by again so we went back and taught her again. She is in her 40's and is single and has lived a rough life, she has been involved with alcohol and is going to Alcoholics Anonymous and she has a piercing in her eyebrow and her lip and a couple tattoos. Wouldn't think she would be very interested in our message but she is awesome. We invited her to church again and she finally said she would come and she came for the first time and we sat next to her and she stayed all three hours and loved it so much that for our next appointment she said "when you two leave who is going to come to church with me when I keep going?" We told her the members would fellowship her and the missionaries are always here. She also brought up being baptized and asked what she needed to do so we came and taught her baptism and some commandments and invited her to be baptized on the 15th. She missed church two weeks ago but we got her a ride and she came to church yesterday. The spirit has been working with her so much that during our fast and testimony meeting she felt the spirit as little children bore their testimonies and she asked the member that brought her to church and was sitting with her if anyone could bare their testimony. Sister Thompson took her up in front to where she could bare her testimony and when the time came she stood up and introduced herself and gave a heart felt testimony of how she started coming to church and why, and gave thanks to Elder Whitworth and I! Her testimony was one of the many miracles that we have seen and heard and witnessed this week. She is preparing herself for baptism this month. Transfers came and Elder Whitworth will be heading down to be companions with one of my old companions, Elder Jensen. I will be getting a new companion named Elder Cook from Canada and is a great missionary. I will be serving in the same area here in Turlock and will still be a zone leader. This week we have transfers and to do stake correlation for Sunday and have zone council on Friday. Next week we will have zone conference which Elder Gibbons of the 70 will be coming to our zone conference and also will be holding a fireside that we need to have our investigators go to next week. I have tried to express the many great things that have happened this week and continue to strengthen my testimony through the things I was blessed to witness. A quote coming from the bible dictionary under faith says "miracles do not produce faith, but faith produces the miracle" also a wonderful quote that I have been listening to conference from 2000 thanks to Eli a general authority talks about becoming converted and talks about a poem or a parable and says something as a father to the son saying "all that I have I could easily give you, but that which I am you must obtain for yourself". God gives us this great life not just to see what choices we can make, but to see what we can become, through the choices that we will make. Are we becoming converted through our actions and the things that we are doing? Not just by the things that we are learning. I love the Gospel! I love it because its the only thing that can bring true happiness to one's soul! Nothing else can bring such joy and we cannot find it anywhere else. I am learning that and hope to be able to apply it through the rest of my life. I know through our faith we will see many great miracles in our life. I also know that through obedience is how we obtain any blessing from God. I hope to hear from you all this upcoming week. Set goals for yourselves and help yourself become something and become converted through faith and obedience to the gospel. We taught many people and accomplished many great goals! :) I love you all! Elder Peña