Lasting Conversions May 29th 2012

Dear friends and family, This past week was so amazing with having a baptism on Wednesday and then the next day having Zone Conference. I am so excited about what I learned at Zone Confrence and how I will apply it to my missionary service. Stepenville was kind of slow this week. We managed to have a lot of members come on exchanges with us but we had alot of appointments punch on us. However, we have some people that we are teaching that are coming along very well. It has been exciting working with the kind of people that are so well prepared. Elder Payne is doing very well. He has been taking the role as senior companion more days a week now than me and he will be on an exchange this week in Stephenville with the district leader. I know it will be a great learning experience for him. We are helping those that we teach prepare for baptism by really making sure they understand the major inportance of it. I have seen where people do get baptized and go inactive right away. We are also making sure that they are truly living the commandments and making the steps in the right order. Faith, repentance and then baptism and recieving the gift of the holy ghost. We then help them as recent converts to continually live rightously by helping them reach lasting conversion so that they may be that memeber that adds to building the Lords kindom here on earth. I am excited for this week to prove to satan that even though we had a slow week this past week, I can still go out and work hard by bringing others closer to Jesus Christ. It sounds like the family room food/storage and excersize room project turned out well. I am trying to picture what it is like. I am sure that Day Camp is going to be amazing. I know that the scouts will have fun with the things that you have planned Mom. That is a crazy bike ride Dad. I remeber when we went on the 50 mile bike ride and I went the whole way and Spencer and the other kid that went held onto the car to get up the long big hill in Prosser. (haha) It sounds like Justin is taking some initiative in getting his spanish down. I decided that I want to learn Spanish when i get home. I have already learned more out here than in Spanish for two years. I actually understand the spanish members pretty well and I am going on an exchange on friday with a spanish missionary to his area so we will see how my Spanish bodes. I hope things go well this week and yes, I am doing very well on using my journal to write in. I actually have a study journal and also a regular journal. Oh, and before I go there was something pretty cool I learned at Zone Confrence. One of the missionarys that gave a training compared the holy ghost to the Liahona. If we do not have faith, diligence and give heed to the holy ghost, it will not work. The same thing went for Nephi's family and using the Liahona. Anyways, I hope this next week goes well with school wrapping up, Day Camp and bike rides. Love, Elder Shoemaker