Nebekers are Finally Here!

Heyyyyyooooooo

This week has sure been something!!  It was kind of a long and hard week for us!!  We spent a lot of time getting things ready and trying to make everything work out and it is just kind of going right now!!  We had a lot of good things happen and somethings we are not all that excited about!!  I guess first off is the Nebekers are finally here!!  They are starting their training right now!  The family just keeps getting bigger!  It will be awesome to have them here and we are super excited!!  It will be a good learning experience for all of us!!  So that is kind of the biggest news of the week!!

In other news next week we will be having a baptism!!  Abraham is finally gettting baptized and he is awesome! He is doing great!  Things are really just rolling with him! He studies he does his homework and he understands!  So next week we will be getting into the water again! It has been quite a while!  About four months!  It has been quite a little dry spell!  We are hoping that our ward can start to have a lot of success and start having more baptisms in our ward!  We are hopeful that the Senior couple can come and help us get somethings going and get the work really moving! Apart from that we have the president coming to introduce them in our ward and give some presentation to our ward about members and missionaries! We are super excited to see what he will say!

Alright well on Tuesday we had a really slow day!  Literally nobody was in their house! We just kind of walked around for a little while!  It wasn't our best day ever! Really nobody was there to visit!

Wednesday we had a pretty good day though! That at least kind of made up for what had happened on Tuesday!  We went and saw an investigator that we are kind of working with! She is being really really difficult!  But it was cool because we were with our member that works in the MTC so we did some practices with her and him to work on things and it was really fun!  Then we saw our ward mission leader and worked a little bit with him!

Thursday we had probably our best day of the week!!  We went with the ward mission leader to eat and then we went and only had time for one visit before we went to our PEC meeting! So we went with a family that was in teaching a little while ago!  So we went to see what we could do! They went to church a lot but never actually got baptized! Well turns out the coolest most chosen one of the family is Rodrigo the 12 year old! He put the goal to go to church every Sunday this year! We are hoping that he can get baptized soon!  But they are a family of five and so we have high hopes for them!  Then we went to our PEC meeting and our ward just had tons of great ideas!  Hopefully they actually do things rather than just leaving them as it is!

Friday we went and taught Abraham and it was so easy! It is awesome when people actually do what we leave them!  It is actually really fun to have them teach us as missionaries!  They learn a lot more and you can really see their progress!  And what they understand!  It is really fun to teach abraham it reminds me when we use to teach Laura!  We can teach a lot more in depth and he follows along!  He has really really good comprehension! And then we tried to go see Camacho but they weren't there! IT was so sad!  We are hoping we can see them again this week before it gets too crazy!  

Saturday!  We went to the Airport to pick up our Kids!  Then we went out to a buffet and ate before we went to stake conference!  It was really good!  Elder Valenzuela is amazing!  He says all sorts of powerful things!  I learned a lot!  

Sunday was conference again!  It was probably the best stake conference I have ever been in!  The messages shared were soooo powerful!  Pres gave an amazing talk!  Elder Valenzuela also killed it with his talk!  I left very uplifted spiritually!  It was awesome to see!

Alright the spiritual thought of the week came from an experience Elder Olson and I had about a week ago!  We were talking about how we haven't really had as much success as we wished here in the offices! We are in a pretty hard area as far as baptisms go! Sometimes the work gets slow and we don't baptize all that much!  So we were getting a little disanimated over it!  And we read something in preach my gospel that says we should try to serve and make the ward better wherever it is that we are assigned!  Well in the long time we have here we have seen our assistance (attendance??) at church go from an average of 55 to an average of about 85!  We have only baptized a couple people here but the whole demeanor of the ward has changed!  We have every major calling filled now!  We have our PEC meeting we are making the changes that we need to be an amazing ward!  So that made us cheer up a little bit!  A lot of times as missionaries we base our success off of baptisms! But there is a lot more that goes into it!  There is a scripture in Alma that talks about missionary work!  It is an amazing story that talks all about exactly how it is being a missionary!!  But just one of the verses I love from it goes like this:

 27 Now when our hearts were depressed, and we were about to turn back, behold, the Lord comforted us, and said: Go amongst thy brethren, the Lamanites, and bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give unto you success.

 30 And we have suffered all manner of afflictions, and all this, that perhaps we might be the means of saving some soul; and we supposed that our joy would be full if perhaps we could be the means of saving some.

 31 Now behold, we can look forth and see the fruits of our labors; and are they few? I say unto you, Nay, they are many; yea, and we can witness of their sincerity, because of their love towards their brethren and also towards us.

This scripture has really meant a lot to me in the mission!  I know that it is really tough being a missionary! Sometimes it is just really hard!  You get disanimated and feel like you can't go on! But I know that God will always be there to do what he did with Alma the Younger and the sons of Mosiah!  He loves us and wants us to have success!  When we put our trust in him and we are patient in everything and keep working hard we will see the success that we have had when we look back! Just like Elder Olson and I experienced!  Have a great week! I love you guys!

Love

Elder Orchard