I want to be (Mar 22)

Dear everyone,

Hold on to your chairs, this one might be a shocker--yep, I got transferred again. Transferred back to Irvine, but not Harbor Hills. We cover two wards actually: the Woodbridge ward and the Lake ward. The Lake ward is a mid-singles ward which means it's a singles ward, but for people thirty and over. My new companion is Elder Gillman from Lindon, Utah. He's pretty cool and I'm excited to work with him. I really like my new apartment and it's a nice area (like anywhere in Irvine isn't lol) so things should be great. We have a Mazda 3 for our car, but the bummer is that it's a 2006 model so it's kind of old, especially compared to the 2010 Malibu I just left. Elder Robertson actually got transferred as well because they are reducing the CM2 ward back to only one set of missionaries, so Elders Hughes and Hewlett who were in the South area of CM2 are now covering the whole ward. I hope they take good care of our investigators :)

This last week was a good one. Elder Robertson and I had some good success and lots of fun doing it. We set a baptismal date with Carl for the 10th and one with sister Peters for the 4th after conference. I don't know if they'll make those dates or not, but they are taking an important step towards making the covenant of baptism. We also made contact with John Windsor who was baptized in September, but hasn't been to church for a while due to the two jobs he has to work to stay alive. He doesn't have anywhere to live so a member in the ward is graciously allowing him to sleep there. He can't afford to fix his car, even though all he does for work is drive it because he delivers pizza for two places. I really hope he is able to get a better job soon. He said he's had some offers so I hope his life improves before too long. We also taught a guy named Chris who recently converted to Islam as I mentioned before. He has a sincere desire and is really interested in religion, but he's convinced he's found the truth. We tried to help him see that he can look at the facts and compare the Quor'an to the Holy Bible all he wants, but he won't know it's true until he reads the Book of Mormon and prays about it. That's the key and that's what every investigator has to do to gain a real testimony.

We also taught another new investigator this week who seems pretty interested. Her name is Nancy and she's a little over fifty. We taught her the Restoration of the gospel and she seemed to accept it, but she wasn't ready to set a baptismal date. We had a really good lesson with Sister Jazmyn Bower on Saturday and brought Brother Call. He's an older man and took time out of preparing for his son's wedding (which was that day) to come with us because he said the gospel is more important. It saved us because we called like half the ward and no one could come with us. I guess it was divine intervention because he helped a lot and was able to answer her questions when we couldn't. He spoke very powerfully and it was a very beneficial lesson. When I am a regular member, I don't want to be like the guy who decided to do his taxes that were due in four weeks instead of come with us. I want to be the guy that sacrifices to go teach the gospel with the missionaries, because those people have such a good spirit about them.

I'd better go so we can shop before we have to be done with our p-day (at six) so hope you all have a good week. Love you as much as all the times I've been transferred the last six weeks.

Elder Curtis