An Emotional Week

From Derek's November 9th letter.

"Well, it was a crazy week... I can't remember exactly what happened but I'll try and go through the highlights! First of all the baptism did not happen this Sunday... That was pretty tough, we'd been in contact with him for all week and he was super excited for it all, but then come Sunday he didn't come to church, we called him a bunch of times and went by his apartment and nobody answered... It was pretty tough especially since he was so solid and we still haven't been able to contact him because now he's changed his phone number and we don't have his new one... Yeah, so we're not sure what's going to happen with that, haha and to make it even more interesting President Matsumori decided to come to our baptism and we had to break the news to him that it wasn't going to happen.

But, we do have some good news. First of all is that we have three very solid baptismal dates for the 20th! The less active family... that just randomly came to church last Sunday, both of the kids are now on date. They're super cool and excited to learn about the gospel. They look so young, haha even though they're 15 and 18, but they're sincerely seeking the truth and you can tell that they feel that it's true, we just have to wait for the requirement of three Sundays for them to be baptized! We've been to the visitor's center with them as well so they're doing super solid!

Then we still have [another young man] who's doing very well as well. The spirit has touched him strongly and for some reason he feels a special connection with us as well. Let's see, what else. Oh yeah, we're working with this less active part-member family,... and we had an incredible lesson with them! We were able to testify strongly of the restoration of the gospel as well as the difference it makes in families and the opportunity it gives us to have an eternal family. It was an extremely powerful lesson and we were able to feel that we were guided by the spirit to really teach and testify to his needs. Then this week we also had to drop one of our investigators that used to have a baptismal date. He just wasn't progressing, and it was super sad... We were very bold and very frank with him, and with that he finally told us that he was in reality never planning on coming to church... It's just been a rather emotional week I guess. Some disappointments and some successes.

Oh, this week was also transfer week and Elder White and I will be staying together!! It'll be sweet, he's a super hard worker so we'll continue to see a ton of miracles! Haha while this letter sounds kind of disappointing in parts, it's really been a good week. We see daily miracles of people that are prepared to listen to us who we get the opportunity to help in even little ways, and sometimes big ways. It's truly a blessing to be a missionary! So crazy that another week has gone by though..."