June 12, 2016

Thanks goodness we're on the last week of the transfer. Unfortunately we aren't going to have any baptisms other than the one we had the first week of this transfer. This week we had a really good zone conference. President Henderson gave a really good training about Joseph Smith and his experiences with the Book of Mormon, highlighting the mission mantra "Vision is paramount, obedience is the price, faith is the power, love is the motive" and how each of those things played into Joseph Smith's introduction to, obtaining of, translating, and publishing of the Book of Mormon. It was really insightful. Then President and Sister Henderson have some departing counsel since they'll be leaving at the end of the month. We were able to teach or less active friend Roy a couple times, his dads the branch president up in Mount Isa, which is waaaaay out in the bush, but he's recently become really interested again in coming back to church and learning about the Plan of Salvation. One of the members we had dinner with was the Farani family, Sister Farani forgot we were coming so she got us Subway sandwiches with ice cream and cookies for dessert. That's something we don't have enough of, haha. We've been continuing to teach Nephi, getting him ready to be baptized, but we need to talk to bishop to work out a couple things before we set a date. Church was good, that night we had splits with the mission prep class and we were able to teach 4 lessons, 3 of which were lessons to nonmembers, so we were just able to cinch our 8 lessons with members present goal. I went with two brothers Edward and Ethan Key. Edward's a ward missionary and he's come out with me and Elder Smith a few times, and we've had dinner with the Keys before. They're really cool. They were telling me about this thing I should try called a Tim-Tam slam, which I would love to explain but they don't have Tim-tams in the states. They're like these chocolate covered wafer sandwich things. This morning we had a mission-wide conference call and the mission president rebuked everybody because apparently there's a lot of companionships not getting up before 6:30, staying more than an hour at lessons/dinner appointments, not studying for specific investigators in the mornings, not setting enough back up plans for the day, etc etc. Me and Elder Smith are already super obedient so we tried thinking of some ways we could increase our obedience but we just resolved to staying more energetic throughout the day, since we're already super obedient anyways. Well that's about it, love you lots and talk to you later!

Elder Cummings