"It's too easy!" (Jan 25)

Dear Family, How are you doing? I had a good week here with Elder Keeler, Elder Griffin, and Elder Shaw. Wednesday I was on exchanges with Elder Griffin working in my area. It was pretty fun specially because it was raining like CRAZY. I didn't want to be out in the rain much so we went around and visited a lot of members--mostly inactive people, or ones I didn't know. After working in this ward for almost six months I pretty much know every single family and their situation.

On Monday we taught the Doane's and Sister Wenzel about missionary work. They were really good lessons. Thursday was a really neat day. We went to Quail Hill (a part of our area) and we saw a big Samoan guy walk into an apartment. Elder Keeler loves Polynesiansso we went and knocked on his door and he let us right in. He was already familiar with our church since practically half of all Samoans are LDS, but he and his sister in law were really nice and let us teach them a lesson. Later that day we taught a less-active family, but the best part of that day was teaching James Nguyen (said like James Win). He is Vietnamese and he is a former investigator. Elder Taka and Elder Keeler knocked on his door when they were on exchanges and he let them right in. I guess he really likes Elder Taka. Anyway, now he's interested again so we went and taught him a lesson and it was picture perfect. He has been brought down to the depths of humility and is searching for something new in his life—especially comfort. He's having marital issues and he seems like he has real intent. So we taught him the Restoration and placed the BOM in his heart (something we do as a mission to people we teach by reading from the introduction with them, reading Moroni's promise, then kneeling and having them pray about the BOM). He was amazed at the introduction and said "the first page of this book answers the questions that I've been searching for!" and said similar comments such as "it's too easy!" It was a super cool lesson and we are really excited about his change of heart. He said he'd definitely read from the BOM and pray about it. We are teaching him again tonight.

Saturday I went on exchanges with Elder Shaw in his area, though it is really just part of my old area so I knew the people and we had a good day. We taught Michelle and the lesson seemed to go well, but she didn't make it to church yesterday. We also taught a less active named Angela Young who doesn't attend because she works on Sundays, but she has a strong testimony and even invited her non-member friend to the lesson so that was super cool. Yesterday we visited some members and had some lessons with them to strengthen them, help them do missionary work, and to encourage them to read PMG. One funny side note is that the Howard family in our ward asked us to take care of their cat while they are gone on vacation this week and last week. We just go over there every other day and feed and water it and clean the kitty litter. Bring in the mail, take out the trash etc. The crazy part though is that their house is being invaded by ants. They come in through the dishwasher somehow so last time we just ran a cycle lol.

Elder Keeler and Elder Bean went back and taught Bob Quinn on Saturday. He is the Jew we found tracting last week. They even took a member and said that the lesson went really well. He is interested in learning more and he even decided to read the whole BOM, but he doesn't think that it's true so hopefully as he reads he will feel something. He's very intellectual, but he's very nice to us so I'm glad he has some nice LDS friends.

Today we went and got the H1N1 vaccine so I should be good not to get the swine flu now. It was funny because when we went into the clinic and told them what we wanted they got all excited and said they needed someone to give it to so they could take a picture. I guess they got an award for their vaccine so we got to get our picture taken to be the example. I think it would be cool if we got our picture in a flyer or newspaper or something. Maybe someone would get baptized. Anyway, I'm about out of time. We are at a newly remodeled Library today and it's super close to our house, so that is really nice. Hope you all have a wonderful week. Remember to read the BOM and PMG :) Love you as much as all the miles we've put on our car.
Elder Curtis