PSA Missionary Wednesday

This in the latest installment of the concordance from my brother, Elder Fields;

Dear Family and Friends,

This week I found out something new about our ward that's very interesting; while most wards have a missionary meal calender, our ward has a missionary splits calender! I can't believe we've got a calender for that! This is a great help to the work in this ward. In all my other wards, we have had to find and ask members to come with us to appointments and here they just freely sign up to do so. This is a great opportunity for the work. Even when those appointments don't go through, every little bit of help from members is worth it.

Thursday we had an appointment with our star investigator. We thought the hardest part in teach her would be teaching about the Word of Wisdom, but she accepted and dropped everything we told her to drop. She was a very heavy social drinker, but she quit without question when we told her tea, alcohol, and coffee were bad. Her only real problem was cigarettes. She knows that they are bad and has desperately wanted to quit them even before we told her to do so. Those things are so addicting that quitting them is one of the hardest things a person can do. She described it as a demon on her back that just wouldn't go away. But now she has the Lord's help in quitting, and she hopes it will not be a problem for that much longer.

Speaking of which, during my mission I've noticed that nobody who smokes actually likes it. They all admit that it's slowly killing them, and want to stop, but it's so addicting that they can't. However, there is a ray of hope in all this. Since so many people know it's bad and actually manage to quit, or hopefully don't start at all, those companies are forced to raise their prices and it drives even more people away from the stuff. Elder M. was in a gas station this week and heard a woman complain about a pack costing $10.00 after tax. She wanted her money back and left empty handed. Nobody wants to pay that much money to kill themselves.

Saturday we had a return appointment with our star investigator and she has been doing really well with everything and better with the no smoking. We taught her the lesson about baptism and committed her to be baptized in three weeks. She was a bit nervous about being baptized so soon, but was otherwise thrilled to accept our invitation. She even wants to throw a party after her baptism and invite all her friends and family to it.

Other than our one Super Star Investigator, most of our work is with less actives. Like all my other areas, this ward has lots of work to be done and we would so much rather visit with a less active member of the Church who has a chance of coming back on Sundays than an someone we may only see once because they have a complete lack of commitment and has never been to church at all. Also, unless a less active has something serious happening with them, they will always let us in.

That's about it for this week.

With Best Regards,
Elder Fields