Email 08/31/09

This was an amazing week. Absolute miracles. Monday was a normal day. Just normal. Tuesday was Zone Conference. How zone conferences used to be was that for the last hour or so President Bradley would give a lesson about some doctrine and we´d always learn a lot. For this conference President Callen came and the WHOLE thing was about Baptism and what we´re lacking and what we need to do to baptize like we should. I took that to heart. It hit me. What I wasn´t doing right or well enough. So I made a list of all that I had to change. So starting Tuesday night after the conference I was determined that I would change everything I needed to. We started doing shorter lessons so we could squeeze every second out of an hour. We started cutting things down by specific zones of our areas and working only in those areas so we wouldn´t waste time. We woke up and went to bed on the minute. I started marking passages of Preach My Gospel and the scriptures for Espinola so he could study them and we would also do practice lessons before we left. We did everything we could so we could walk into the investigator´s house with the spirit. We were bold. We did everything we could to be in tune with the spirit so we could teach with power. We didn´t except "no". We worked every second that we could. And the blessings flowed.
The scriptures are about a marvelous work and a wonder. We saw that wonder. We met people of all walks of life. Salesmen, lawyers, mechanics, garbage men, farmers, you name it and the spirit testified to ALL of them. We were putting baptismal dates left and right. I was doing it like the shotgun approach. If we shot at everything we´d eventually hit something. I was not expecting progress from all. But we did our part and waited on the Lord for his. Sunday we went and gathered 15 investigators. 15! And they all came with us. As the services continued 12 more came. We had 27 investigators in church. We had enough to start a branch. I couldn´t believe it. All of them accepted baptismal dates. All of them are preparing to be baptized. I told Lytle and Rucker about our numbers and they just about cried. We got laughing so hard because we don´t know how we´re going to get all the baptismal clothes at one time. We have 27 people to be baptized in September. 27! I´m still in shock. We´re so blessed. The marvelous work and wonder is here with us right now. The Lord loves his people and I know that he is with us. I know this is his work. I feel like I did nothing this week but I´m so exhausted. We taught with a spirit so strong that the strength got sucked out of us.
And the blessings didn´t stop. Leidyd got baptized without a problem. Espinola is an amazing missionary. We´re working a bit on his Guaraní and really working on Preach My Gospel. We kept teaching our German family. And they came to church. They´re part of this group that´ll be baptized in the end of September.
The interview with President was wonderful too. He told me that he trusted me and that I would be around to see the mission reach it´s potential. I think that´s what gave me the extra push I needed. The September transfer will be the 23rd.
I love you all. I´ve never felt this energized before.
Elder Frank Wills