make it shake

Dear Family,

It has taken me about 35 minutes to read all the e-mails (that was 35 new e-mails in the inbox) you've sent me. It seems the most exciting and popular themes had to do with cows pointing north. Modern Dutch, I'd say. But thanks for writing so much. I felt a little special.

On Tuesday, we were out proselyting with a young man from the ward, and we knocked a door where we had an appointment planned. The people inside invited us in, and we found ourselves face-to-face with an older woman and some six other women, her daughters and daughters-in-law, I believe. They all professed different religious beliefs, though a couple of them seemed to be united as Seventh-Day Adventists. Either way, the opportunity presented itself as a fun lesson from the start. We got through the first half of the lesson, then the house started shaking and a little earthquake interrupted our lesson. That was exciting. It reminded me of our MTC District's motto of "hazlo estremecer" (or "make it shake"), taken from a talk given to us from Elder Holland in which he encouraged us to - like the angel sent to Alma - make the earth shake on behalf of our investigators. They all accepted another appointment, and we had a great lesson on the Book of Mormon later in the week.

Wednesday was a stressful day. I was with Elder Smith (I might have mentioned that he's from another area and his companion was also ending his mission) and basically alone in coordinating the trips of outgoing missionaries and picking up the inbound ones. We received eight new missionaries in our zone, and we sent 4 on their way south to little towns that are farther away. Our zone was then divided, and I don't have to worry about them much anymore. We're down to just 8 areas now (from what was 12), so there's only 16 missionaries here for us to focus on. My new companion, Elder Cavazos, is fantastic. He's from Utah, though he was born in California. He's just about to pass the year mark in his mission, so we're pretty close in terms of time. We've been working hard these last few days.

One highlight from this week was a lesson we had yesterday. This last weekend, there was a convention for the married couples in the stake. The Stake President and his wife, and other experienced couples, gave some classes and then they ended in a dance. They even had a dance competition for the couples. We weren't invited (I might have liked the dance competition..). Anyways, a member invited a friend of hers (and her husband) to come to the convention, and they found it interesting. We received the referral and taught the husband yesterday. I had never seen anyone so interested in investigating the church! It was fantastic. We talked about the Restoration and left him a copy of the Book of Mormon. His interest was contagious, and his kids ran off with the book and began trying to figure out what it was in the meantime. We have another appointment planned for Wednesday. The first counselor in our ward's bishopric told us that he had met the man at the convention. He told us that he's the future Bishop. That made us smile.

Elder Stone was an assistant to the president when I arrived in the mission. He picked me up at the airport with some of the other office elders. He was a fantastic missionary, too, but unfortunately I didn't get the chance to work with him in any zones.

Thanks for writing and have a great week! Good luck in school for everyone.

Love,
Elder Withers