Alright, so dad really floored me by announcing that our new mission president has been assigned, so forgive me if the distraction alters my small writing ability.

This week was pretty interesting. Just to mention a few events that happened...

We got a text from our recent convert family that said 'I no longer want to be a Mormon.'

We had a appointment this morning that said 'I would leave my husband to make baptism happen.'

We had a very excited family committed to church that disappeared when the member went to pick them up.

Our baptismal candidate for Saturday has not come to church the past 2 Sundays.

The funny thing is that I could go on but I actually seem to be happy. Lots of prayer has taken care of things.

We went over to our recent converts home sometime after she sent the text and when we got there she began to ask "Well why did y'all come over?...OH YA I forgot to tell you that my home teacher already fixed it and I am happy to be a Mormon still."

The wife of the husband is teaching him the importance of the church, one step at a time, and he will come around.

The Bishop said that it is probably better to get the young girl baptized Saturday so that she may have a record for her lifetime.

We have an appointment with the family tonight.

All in all I guess you could say that I am worrying less and less now. The more efficient I work with the Lord, the more awesome experiences he provides. People often use their agency to make choices that hurt a lot, but usually the Lord works them out before I can make a dent in resolving the concern. It is just some cool examples of what Dan Dalton would say "The Lord is working harder than all 50,000 missionaries combined.

Tuesday of this week was concrete evidence of that. We had a stacked day with no room for error. We taught a lesson at the start of the day on a doorstep in ten minutes, the spirit was there and she committed to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. We showed up to district meeting 30 seconds early. Once that was over we ran over to our appointment with Bob (the miracle who only goes to his mail box once a week.) We taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ and had a great discussion. We then had to create an entire stake president report in about 2-3 hours, something that normally takes 2-3 days. We collected all the information, reviewed it twice and just like that had 5 copies of a 14 page report. We had a dinner that let us make the copies. After that we rushed to a meeting with a 9 year old girl who's mom wants her to be baptized. We taught an excellent plan of salvation lesson in 20 minutes and when she closed with prayer, she basically repeated back the plan. Then we ran to a members house where we needed to have a fairly quick appointment so we could be to our stake president review on time. What ended up happening was the member we were with kept talking and we eventually committed them to baptism, making us one minute late for the meeting. Let me begin by explaining walking into a meeting with a stake president, a mission president, one of his counselors and 2 high councilors late was not the best situation to be in. When I gave my excuse President Smith laughed and said "That is the best excuse I have ever heard!" and President Wright said "Look brethren, we'll cancel this meeting if you're going to go out and set dates." We then proceeded to have the best SPR we ever had.

Another story was when I was in Farmersville on exchanges. I spent the night up there with the Elder I was exchanging with and had the worst night of sleep ever, it seemed like. I kept praying for some help. Now what I am about to say may or may not be an answer to prayer! BUT the Elder forgot to turn the alarm clock on... So we woke up late, got ready and had a quick study and planning session. We made interesting plans which included one hour of simply making phone calls in the afternoon. One call that was made was with a family that agreed to have us over that night. When we got to their home and started teaching, the spirit was strong and pretty soon it dawned on me that they were all active members of the church. Or so I thought. Elder Frost let me know as we walked out that the 15 year old son had yet to join the church. My entire questions and thoughts were basically geared towards him! He seemed to love what we read too, 3rd Nephi 11. His dad bore a power testimony as well on baptism. They want the Elders back as soon as they can for another lesson and dinner.

Well I am excited for the mission experiences I still have left. Now if I could convince my family to forget about signing me up for school and come down to Texas, pick me up and tour the mission for a month.

Love y'all

Elder Metcalf