November 22, 2010

Greetings from Longview,

 

       As always I hope this letter finds each of you happy and well. The week has been very good to elder McNinch and I and as Mom predicted, I do have quite a bit to report on this week.

     We are finally getting our area figured out. It is very nice to be in a car again, especially since our area is so geographically large. We found 3 new investigators this week! One of them has a baptismal date for January, which may or may not need some modifying. We were also able to get in touch with some of the people that the previous elders were teaching. We should be setting 1 or 2 baptismal dates in the coming week or so.

     Our progressing investigator's name (the one with the baptismal date) is Morgeus, but she just goes by Mo. She has a lot of obstacles to overcome before she can be baptized but she was at church yesterday and she seemed to be glued to the speakers. One speaker in particular spoke on prophets and she was absolutely riveted.

     One of our new investigators actually found us. His name is John. He is from Longview but last week he was visiting friends in Utah and had a lot of questions about the Church. They told him that he should look up the missionaries at home and that we could answer all his questions. He found his way to LDS.org and looked up the meeting place and time for his address. When we approached him after sacrament meeting, he informed us that he wanted to investigate the Church. We sat with him in Gospel Principles class and he was intently marking his scriptures and writing down tons of notes. We are going to commit him to baptism on the first lesson, scheduled for later this week.

     The last of the 3 new investigators is named Michael. Michael teaches English at a local college and is very interested about learning about other religions. It seems the setting was more conversational than anything with the previous elders, but he is realizing as of our meeting this weekend, that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has everything that he feels should be in the true church. We gave him some assigned reading and we will begin more formal lessons with him next week.

     The East Texas culture continues to be entertaining but I love the people more and more. There is never a dull moment out here. The wards here are very large, but with very VERY low activity rates. Bishop Bayles(which according to him is pronounced Bales) told us that if everyone on the rolls in the Longview stake was active, they'd have to create a new stake to contain them all.

     Elder McNinch and I continue to love serving with each other. We are having an absolute blast here. The area is, admittedly very tough however, but we are doing just fine. We are going to baptize like crazy here, so stay tuned.

     Thank you all for your thoughts, prayers, letters and packages. They have made many a day brighter. I love you all very much and you are always in my prayers. I hope you all have a wonderful, safe thanksgiving. Until next time; be good, stay safe, and keep the faith!

 

Love,

 

Elder Michael P. Lyman

   Texas Dallas Mission