Well it is a bit interesting to hear "you'll be speaking in sacrament on Sept. 11 but dont get trunky." and I'll leave it at that...

This week was awesome. Tuesday I had a huge mission highlight when we met President Durrant. We got to the meeting one hour early because it was at our stake center and while we were setting up chairs he walked in. You could definately feel the mission president's presence. We had about 45 missionaries in our group and we basically hung on to every sylabol that he would utter. At the beginning of his meeting he read page 148 of preach my gospel and asked for a volunteer to role play a one minute message with him. There was silence for a seconds before the spirit worked on me enough that before I knew it I was role playing with our new mission president in front of the other missionaries. I dont care how long I've been out, that was a bit nerve racking! It went well though and it played and important role later. Our zone stayed after lunch for interviews that afternoon. I was the final interview of the day. It was the most powerful interview I have had and he paid me some wonderful compliments. I walked in and he said 'of course your a zone leader' referring to the example of the role play interview. He said some other things that were quite unique but I'll leave them to my journal rather then the world knowing. It was awesome. He is a phenomenol leader which got me very excited yet extremely depressed that I only have a short time with him here in the TDM... A missionary did end up asking him a basketball question and he talked about how when he was younger he watched Julius Irving play basketball, his hero. Then, years later he was playing against him in the NBA. I have full confidence in our mission president.

We had a great find last week as well. Elder Hong and I were in our nightly planning session and I introduced 'process of elimination' to him. We each pick 10 streets without the other one knowing what we are choosing. Then we take the pool of 20 streets, we each pick 5 and whatever streets match up, we knock. Well within the initial choosing of 10 streets I felt very impressed about a street next to Bishop Thomas' home. Turns out when we showed each other the streets we had picked, Elder Hong had the same street on his list. It was obvious we needed to go there. We also picked 7pm as the time to go. When we got there we saw a family outside and we approached them. They knew Bishop pretty well and quickly agreed to an appointment. We told Bishop about it that night, turns out he has had similar impressions about that same family and has spent the last 4-6 weeks improving their relationship. We teach them tonight with Bishop so I am excited. If they cancel, I will die.

A big event of sadness happened on Thursday when we turned Hardy over to the missionaries in his area. He had totally converted to Christianity and is dead set on baptism this month since we started meeting with him. We taught in a member's home in his area and I nearly lost it. It was then that while everyone was waiting for my direction that I heard a little voice 'this is it, you are at the height of your mission and it is about to be over.' That was difficult. Hardy came to the branch on Sunday anyway though.

Some other highlights were sharing mission experiences with most of the active members lessons we had, they are quite inspiration and you definately find the spirit when you are creative in how you perform missionary work. Sure do love the miracles.

Well it is fun to hear the lake stories from the family. However, I think the jealousy remains on your side of the court...

With love to y'all

Elder Metcalf