Well the joy continues to roll on. The sad part about most of the emails I send highlight the few miracles throughout the week, while the dirt is never something you want to broadcast. For example, Monday night Elder Hall and I were in a good rhythm tracting and have been using this new contacting pattern that is producing miracles that a member helped us come up with. About 20% of our contacts accepted return appointments. The sad part is that most of them fall into the trap of Satan and eventually, through anti, drop us hard like a rock. We had a family Monday that I contacted, we went back and taught them, and their sincerity was very apparent, "Well I grew up Catholic" she said "but I don't really go to church anymore but it is something I want for me and my family." She loved the Book of Mormon, read it but (I hate the deadly 3 letter word 'but') when I called to confirm the following appointment, the response was "I found some stuff on the Internet and I am no longer interested." My patience and charity is being tried to the core. The same day we found them we had the father of a family of four, that we taught the restoration, call and basically express the same things. It is quite odd the strange world we live in. The carnal, easy natures of men are being much chosen over the true paths of happiness. The hard part, for me at least, is to look into a new investigator's eyes, teach and bare testimony and have to come to grips that the majority of them wont ever let me come back again even while the spirit may be touching their hearts.

Two scriptures come to mind though that keep my hope going: "And this he did that he himself might go forth among his people, or among the people of Nephi, that he might preach the word of God unto them, to stir them up in remembrance of their duty, and that he might pull down, by the word of God, all the pride and craftiness and all the contentions which were among his people, seeing no way that he might reclaim them save it were in bearing down in pure testimony against them." and "Behold, I went to hunt beasts in the forests; and the words which I had often heard my father speak concerning eternal life, and the joy of the saints, sunk deep into my heart." I think I am beginning to understand only a fraction of what you (yes mom and dad) must have felt raising me as a teenager. It gives me hope to realize that more than likely the Spirit has told everyone I have taught "it's true" but the choice to live the Gospel has yet to take priority or be desired amongst other inferior aspects of their lives... yet.

Now on to the happiness! Felipe got your email and said he cried through the whole thing and was grateful for it. I got permission to have dinner with them sometime soon although they wont be able to for a while because their daughter was born! Felipe sounded overjoyed on the phone and it was a similar feeling to having yet another niece born to the clan of 'papa de ron metcalf' so I was pretty thrilled.

Thursday night we had a relatively intense lesson with one of our golden investigators with a baptismal date for this month. I wont mention his name for obvious reasons but it is pretty easy to guess if you read last week's email... We split up for the night and one of the YSA's in the branch met me at the church to teach him. We taught the end of the Gospel of Jesus Christ lesson, The word of wisdom and The Law of Chastity. That was the big one. Turns out he has had a girlfriend for over 5 years so needless to say it was a tough one to commit to. After 30 minutes of teaching the law of chastity he finally committed. He went to Austin the next day to visit her so we did our best to help set up parameters. I thought it would be unique to note that although we live in this strange world of sin and apostasy, there were 4 of us young men between 20-22 discussing ways of NOT breaking the law of chastity. Before we parted ways I gave him my iPod after making a quick playlist of conference talks to listen to on the way down.

Some interesting highlights this week was walking around Plano for 4 1/2 hours waiting for our brakes to be replaced the day after it took 2 hours for our oil to be changed. We worked on a Stake President Report that we have with the Stake President and Mission Presidency tomorrow (my new companion will be a bit surprised I'm sure).

We had a leadership training meeting on Tuesday that was pretty epic. I liked how they went over the basics of the same stuff I have been learning for over a year but did it in a way that was refreshing. I am becoming a bit of an old timer missionary I do believe which is super sad. Something that Sister Smith talked about was to be nice to others and that there was too much belittling within the mission. The next morning before studies I had a inkling of a feeling I would be giving a talk in district meeting and a few minutes into reading about Mosiah 27 our district leader called and assigned me to speak about Christlike attributes. It was awesome how it all worked out. I talked about who Alma was before the angel and who he was after the angel and how we need angelic motivation to develop our own Christlike attributes. Angels like the scriptures, righteous leaders, family, etc... and how we need to be Angels to other missionaries to help them develop. I suppose that talk was more for me though!

Sure do love y'all

Elder Metcalf