Wearing Nametags

Halo Keluargaku,

Nametags this last week went well! It actually feels totally natural already, and I think it's been a good benefit for the work. People immediately know what we're there doing and it's a great way to help people understand the name of the church, which is always a little bit of a struggle. It's just a little long and harder to understand here, but this has been helpful.

It is *super* awesome to see that letter about the early church memeber here. I can't believe there are pictures of the first missionary baptism in Ipoh! That's quite a legacy to get to look back and see! So crazy the kinds of connections you end up with in the church, huh? Just shows you what a real difference every person makes.

Things in Tawau have really turned around here in the last few days. These last two weeks have been tough! Almost everybody who looked really promising dropped us or we had to drop and our teaching pool took a major hit. We kept our spirits up though and trusted that the Lord would help things come back together. Sometimes you just have off weeks. So, on Monday, we went out for a normal day of good hard work (setting a goal of giving away more pamphlets and trying to ask everyone for return appointments), did a little contacting and taught a couple of lessons, then came home to do the numbers. Strangely, somehow we never realized that anything unusual had happened, but when we started adding up the numbers we found out that somehow we'd ended up with 11 new investigators that day, which is almost completely unheard of for this part of the mission. Our goal for new investigators for an entire week for my time here in Tawau has been about 7-9, and yet somehow on what felt like a pretty average day we'd ended up with 11. Yesterday we added another 6. So, we're going from getting about 8 last week to shooting for a goal of 25 this week. It's a total miracle, but it's really taught me in a big way that the Lord rewards faith and boldness in trying to do this work. And also that when things look darkest, big blessings are often right around the corner.

So, the work here in turning around. Elder Stewart and I are commited to working with the Lord to hit our mission expectations even in an area that's traditionally thought of as being a little tougher. And we're going to make it!

I love you so much! Always working hard out here to do the Lord's work! Talk to you before long!

Elder Blissett