Last week before transfer

This is the last week of the transfer and I don’t know what is going to happen. I might be going to Suriname, but I also might stay here for a transfer. Who knows what’s going to happen. Most of the missionaries in the area say that I will be going to Suriname. I guess I will need to wait until Thursday to find out. Transfers are always exciting.

We had District Conference in the Georgetown Guyana District yesterday. The District President and some other people spoke on some things including the fact that everyone is working on getting a stake in Guyana. There were a lot of people there. I even saw some people from my last area that I baptized. That is the most amazing thing. It brings up a great joy knowing that people that I’ve baptized are still active and are taking the church seriously. On top of that, we had 8 people at Church. They all liked the district conference and so 6 of them can get baptized on Saturday. I really love this work.

The people here are going crazy about the elections in the US. The all think that I am an American and so when we pass them on the street they start talking to us about politics and things like that. The funny thing is that most people do not know what they are talking about. They are just happy about the fact that there is a black President in the US. A lot of the missionaries here are not happy with Obama being the president. They are all republican. There are some funny discussions that come from that.

Greetings from Guyana

This week was pretty good. We had 9 investigators at church on Sunday and we have 20 people with baptism dates for the next 3 weeks. I hope we will be able to baptize most of them if not all of them. A lot of these people are really prepared to receive the gospel. That is always really exciting and very uplifting. It makes all of us really happy. As a mission we are hoping to get 2008 baptisms by the end of this year and every missionary is working hard to achieve that goal. As for Elder Olsen and I, we got up early and left the apartment early on Sunday to get as many people as we could to church. We really saw the fruits of our labors.

The district meetings I plan help a lot, because I can just focus on the things that my district needs. Basically I stand and teach a lesson for about one hour. I am giving my second district meeting on Tuesday. My first one was about love for your area, your investigators, and your companion. Without love missionary work does not work. Nothing happens without love. President said, “Do ‘Missionary Work’, not ‘Missionary Things’.”

I finally got the package and I was so happy about it. Thank you for all of the things in it. I really like the CDs. I listen to them all the time. The kids love the lollypops. The smiles on their faces are amazing. We took this really poor family consisting of a mother and her two children out last week. We took them to an ice cream store and bought them ice cream. The children (10 and 7 years old) loved it and the mother was so thankful. Things like that are just really amazing. We did not do much, but they were really grateful. The people here really like it when we roll up our sleeves and help them with different things. We moved a pile of sand for a person we did not know. After we were done they gave us drinks and pineapple and all this fruit, because they were so thankful. Just simple things like that make them so happy.

I love this work. It is amazing. It changes people’s lives and it changes the lives of the missionaries. It has changed mine. I know it has.

Anyway, I need to get going. I have just a few minutes left on the computer and I need to write president Robison his weekly letter.

Love,
Jeff

Reflections of Christ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oteno81QzzQ