I was extremely happy with the twenty new investigators we had last week, but I thought "no, we couldn't possibly maintain that number when our average has been ten." I am happy to be proven wrong. We ended this week with twenty two new investigators! A new record since I have been here. The zone is working really hard. We had the chance this week to go on exchanges with all of our District Leaders. It is a great experience to see how their areas are doing and how we can help each other improve. It has also been an interesting experience going to the Spanish wards on exchanges. I feel pretty useless in most of the lessons we teach, but the food is really good. :) It seems that we are always trying to come up with ways to help the zone. One of the ways we have come up with has been a zone competition titled "FONTIKI." As a zone we are setting goals each week and when we accomplish them we move one more step up the Island of FONTIKI. We also have a companionship competition. The companionship who invites investigators to be baptized on a specific date at the most first appointments gets to hold on to the sought after tiki mask for the week. The companionship who wins at the end gets to keep the mask and they will be the guests of honor at THE ZONE LUAH WE WILL HAVE! (assuming we make it to the top of the island by the end.) We have talked to the Palmetto Tongan Ward and we will have entertainment and some Bwaka (a pig). Our zone is pumped for it. In other news we had a great miracle happen in our area this last week when we went to an appointment to see the Carrols. They are a part member family that we started teaching. Casey, our investigator, is a lot more solid than I thought. We asked "how has the Book of Mormon reading been coming." She said "really good! i'm in 2 Nephi chapter 10. I am doing a program where I will finish it in thirty days." As you can imagine that doesn't happen to often among the people we teach. Towards the end of teaching the restoration I asked "Casey have you felt the spirit before?" She explained that she has never felt anything that she could call the spirit until sunday. She has been to church many times in other places that they have lived but she said that this experience was different than all the rest. She said that during one of the talks at church an overwhelming feeling came over her. She said that everything that was happening became clear and she new this was the right thing to do. I asked do you feel like this was your confirmation to be baptized. She said "yes." Unfortunetly they will be out of town quite a bit and she has requested more time than most do before her baptism, so we set her date for March 16th. I am confident she will be baptized on that day. As a side note we had a breakfast with the zone this morning where we had Brother Miller of the stake presidency speak to us and get us ready for a great week. This next week we will have zone confernence and a few other things. AMANDA CONGRATS ON THE MISSION CALL! That mission sounds perfect for you. (well I know it is:) Spanish sisters are rare. In fact our mission has never had one. We are getting our first spanish sister this next transfer. If your mission is similar to ours in that respect your trainer will be a speaker of spanish already (maybe even foreign.) I would love to have you as a sister in our zone, but I guess your my sister wherever you are. :) Thank you all for reading.

Another transfer has raced on by and we are on to the next. I am afraid to blink thinking I may wind up on a plane the next time I do. :) I have under seven months left and if I could buy more time I would. I know what your thinking seven months is still a good chunk of time. You see good friend, a mission is like a roll of toilet paper the closer you get to the end the faster it goes. That means that my six and a half months is going to feel like a few weeks around the corner. Elder Cox's five weeks will probably feel like days. For me to do all that I have been asked to do I need to go the extra mile for these last six months. The signs that scatter our area saying "no stopping at any time" will be a good reminder for me of this commission. :) Let's see there is so much to report. Well one big thing worth mentioning is that we had a mission goal to get 500 baptisms by years end. We ended at 520! The mission has never broken the 500 barrier so this was an exciting feat for all of the missionaries to be a part of. Our mission president never ceases to remind us that it is not the number but the people following Jesus Christ that we are after. It brings fulfilment for me knowing that I had the chance to be a part of one of the highest baptising zones in the mission during this fruitful time. I pray that our zone stays up to speed to accomplish much more in the Lord's service. For our area we have seen much good happen. This last transfer we found many new investigators, which also means we lost many investigators. I am happy to say that we have a teaching pool and we are hopeful to see some baptisms this next transfer. I will keep you posted. Elder Paget and I have more time together and I am excited to see what we can do with it. I love this work and it will be hard to give it up. This week we will have six new missionaries come into our zone. I hope they are ready to get to work. :) On Sunday we had stake conference. Elder Nelson D. Cordova, an area seventy, was in attendance. He was so funny! Him combined with a talk from the Fontana Stake President, Michael Sears, made it a meeting one I will not forget. One of the greatest things I have been able to learn here in Fontana has been leadership skills in the church. President Sears is someone I look up to so much. I could go on but I will not. Well until next week (hopefully). 

December 17th, 2012

Hello! Christmas is getting so close. Time has been flying on by. We have been working at a very high pace for our area and our zone. It has been a bit stressful lately. :( there is a lot of pressure on us for our zone to succeed. our area has been doing well we have been finding people like crazy! we set seven baptism dates this week! (only a couple of them are solid) I will tell you more about it when we have a chance to talk face to face! as far as a time goes I am not sure we will text you the day before to confirm a time. :) Sorry about running my other account down I made a couple of dumb purchases.. like shoes.. my old ones were dead.. I didn't have money in missionary account to afford them so I did use t-shirt money... :( I will be more frugal.. thank you guys for thinking about my return.. though i don't want to be babied.. I need to fend for myself one of these days ... :) I love you both so much I can't wait to update you more in a week.