Elder Dallin Talbot's Mission Fresno California 2015-2017

No, sadly I forgot to take pictures.  I may have misspelled the name last week for the Avila family.  They read the Boom of Mormon again but they will be out of town for conference.  Elder Schmid had a tooth taken out and was told to rest for a few days and felt pretty sick so we tried to work from the apartment, making calls and setting appointments while we could.  We had some good lessons this week and we had some great time at the putting the raisins in boxes at the vineyard, it was so much fun.  I am so excited for conference next week that should be great. Our mission really tries to focus on getting people to the temple within a month.  Some of the people I taught in Valentine after they were baptized made it to the temple and I think 1 also got her patriarchal blessing.  I have been studying about enduring to the end in the gospel of Jesus Christ and you are so right, living the gospel never ends and we have been focusing with our less act...

M y misery last week was self inflicted of course, from a bad attitude and not wanting to work as hard as I should.  I read a letter that my companion had that really opened my eyes to parts of missionary work.  It spoke of a missionary who had some amazing experiences through hard work and opposition.  One of the biggest ones was what he learned in a prayer that the Lord knows where his elect are, but he also wants us to grow so that requires some sifting at times.  The Lord loves us, watches over us and knows what I am going through.  We had a wonderful specialized training from our leaders about exercising more faith as our mission is baptizing very few at the moment.  We don't have any serious investigators at the moment at the moment, but that will just give us more time to work hard to find prepared people.  We have been working harder to pray and search for families that will strengthen the ward because they could really use all the extra suppor...

This week we visited with the Marques family.  We got to know them and talked about there goals and how they want to make it to the temple.  They came to church yesterday and it was super exciting to see them.  On Wednesday we visited the Scott's with our ward mission leader and taught about the power of Christ's grace.  They expressed concerns at feeling offended or not included at church, which is sad because they are letting that get in the way of blessings.  I went on exchange with Elder Hopkins, my district leader here and we had lots of fun working hard and talking to people.  We found some potentials this week and we hope they turn out well.  We only had one lesson with an investigator this week, it was a great one with Linda where she committed to make reading the Book of Mormon a priority.  We are really hoping she does because otherwise we can't help her is she doesn't have the desire to grow.  We are trying to work setting up a pre...