Miracles & a Baptism

So, Elder Innis and I are having loads of fun. We've had a great time teaching. We're still developing a rhythm to our teaching, which is pretty hard to get, but we're working on it. With Elder Schwarzkopf I was new so I pretty easily adapted to his teaching style, with Elder Amundsen I liked his style more and we seemed to just kinda click when It came to passing off, but with Elder Innis we've both been trained differently, so we're still trying to find a good balance and rhythm. But we've started teaching a family this week which has been really cool. It's a single Mum and her 4 kids, and it's been really gratifying to see the peace the gospel is bringing to her life. She said after our first prayer together when she was super worked up, "Wow...I feel so calm. That's amazing. I feel like I'm on top of a cloud"., So that's awesome. Besides that all is well. OH, I guess I'll address the changes in the mission that happened a few weeks ago. 

So 

1. The number of zones went from 11 to 7, which means Zones are huge now. Our Zone is 41 missionaries. 

2. All of the dropped Zone Leaders were made trainers last transfer 

3. District leaders were given increased responsibility

4. President has said that by dropping the Zone Leaders he's showing us that titles mean nothing and that the mission needs to be less title focused, so yeah. 

Hope all is going well with you! Love you! 

No pics today, not enough time!

[and from the following week]

Ok, so I've learned from my previous companion Elder Amundsen that he found a cat farm in Florida with over 60 adorable cats on it, and now I'm super jealous. I now have to deal with that jealousy all week...yay. 

So it's been a WEIRD WEEK! 

Alright, here's what's up. We got a phone call from the AP's during district meeting this Wednesday, and they said, "There is somebody in one of your teaching pools that needs to be baptized next weekend. Find them, and get to it", so when they hung up I immediately said, "WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE THEY THINKING!!! WE HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO ONE THAT CAN BE READY FOR BAPTISM NEXT WEEK!". Elder Innis, being the spiritual saintly giant that he is, made us go through our list of investigators, and lo and behold I WAS RIGHT! Sooooo we decided to try by all our formers, all of the area book formers, and pretty much just try to find SOMEONE who had at some point been taught by missionaries, and now wanted to be baptized in a week. Two stipulations for baptisms. 1. They must have attended church twice, 2. They must be living gospel standards (Word of Wisdom, law of chastity, etc.) 10 day's prior to baptism. Those standards pretty much mean that we couldn't just go out, find the first person we see and convince them to be baptized.  So we wen't through the whole day finding like crazy and at the last hour we had NO ONE. So, we wen't to our appointment with R., an eternal investigator that has WoW issues, and hasn't been to progressive for a few months annnndddddddddd

he had decided to quite smoking that day

he felt more sure then ever that he should be baptized

he had been to church more then twice

has a testimony of Jesus Christ 

and he felt ready to finally move on in the gospel

So yeah, R. is getting baptized on Friday. 

MIRACLE

I'm exhausted, this has been stressful as all get out, but ya know what, the Lord gave us a goal, we did everything we could to hit that goal, and in the end, he provided the Ram. 

Love you guys!!!

 Elder Hays

P.S NOELLE YOU HAVING A BABY!

and later - this photo of the successful baptism: