Things are still going strong here in Oakland. It was a busy week for all of us. Lots of exciting things are afoot for the Oakland 7th Branch.
Firstly, the news everyone wants to know. Transfers were this Tuesday and Elder Carns left me to go serve in San Francisco...I will miss him. We had a great time together. However, Elder Mitchell has now joined me! He is an great guy. He is from Lehi Utah, and came out to the mission at the same time my previous companion Elder McKean did. He is super smart and graduated High School with his Associates degree... He is into baking and quoting movies and working hard, so we get along swimmingly. We were also both trained by Elder Li, so we are "brothers." Its been fun to work with him thus far.
This week has been a very focused one for us, just showing Elder Mitchell the ropes. This is the first time he is in a new area, and we are going to take it by storm! We did our typical service activities throughout our week (Oscar Pemantle loves Mitchell already), and we also spent practically every spare second tracting or finding in some way, shape, or form. I find that I have become bolder in my finding efforts and when answering people's questions about the church, and that makes finding more bearable, even fun! Elder Mitchell helps to keep me busy, and I appreciate that. Unfortunately, we didn't have the chance to meet with any investigators this week; Aris has been out of town, and Lisa is being a little unresponsive...That makes things tough, but we have a lot of new assignments to fill our time. Our new Branch President and Elders Quorum President (one of the Senior Missionaries assigned to work in our Branch!) have been given the special assignment from the Stake to work with and contact most every Less-Active person we can. Elder Mitchell and I are excited to see how working on this task and making it a focus will influence our work. For example, this past week we were able to meet some pretty interesting people as we walked between addresses of members. Some of them were possibly drunk or high, but that's beside the point. We feel good that we're finding ways to get the word out. We're good at motivating each other.
Other than that, there isn't much else that happened this week. We tried to put up a gazebo canopy that was too small, cooked some really good paleo food (Elder Mitchell is allergic to living, basically, but it gives me more recipes I want to try), attended a whole bunch of meetings, spent more time in traffic, studied, and I got to perform a musical number at a special fireside. In short, we tried to be good missionaries. I'm coming to learn more about how when we are trying to do good things, even if maybe they arent necessarily the most fun or the most convinient, Heavenly Father accepts our offerings and will work with what we have. We have been able to see a few less-actives come to church this week as a result of our efforts, and I was grateful for those small miracles.
I know God lives, I know His church has been restored, and this week has helped me to solidify that. I am grateful for the small part I get to play in his plan!
All my love to you all! JiDu HuoZhe!
Elder Butters/Bao ZhangLao
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