10/25/10 Great Week

Hello Everyone!

This week has been super crazy!!! Transfer week is always super crazy. As I said last week President Colton did transfers a little bit different this last time with sending all the info out over the phone on voicemail. On Tuesday however, 8 of our visa waiting missionaries received their visas and took off on Wednesday to Mexico so that made even more transfers. President sent out a voice message to all the zone leaders telling us more transfer info. Before this second message our zone was pretty much untouched with effected companionships but he decided to "drop a nuclear bomb on the Poky Central Zone" as the assistants called it. We had every companionship change in the zone including ours. We got put in a threesome for a few weeks with Elder Nelson. Elder Nelson is a great guy! He goes home in a few weeks to Sacramento and then is getting married three weeks after that. It's kinda weird to be honest, I mean he has a fiancee as a missionary and has their wedding announcements all over the house. He has her pictures all over his desk and his walls and receives at least 2 letters from her a day. He's happy though and that's the important part.

We had an amazing week! We had the great opportunity to set 3 baptism dates this week! Two of the three was in our first visit right after giving the account of the first vision. What a powerful account. The Lord taught Elder Rudd and I patience this last transfer because we were working really hard teaching over 20 lessons a week for 7 weeks but with nothing to show from it, well at least I thought there was nothing to show from it but the Lord quickly proved me wrong. Not only were we able to teach over 20 lessons for 7 weeks with the help of the Lord but he showed me that by working as hard as I could for a short time he would prepare his children for us to teach them. I think we sometimes have to prove that we wont give up on our Savior and when we do that then He'll open the windows of heaven and we'll witness miracles; that is the idea of enduring to the end right? I think so. Great lesson learned this week. I love learning so many great truths and lessons while being the Lord's missionary.

Yesterday there was an Elder that returned home from his mission in Little Rock, Arkansas. His family volunteered me to do a musical number so I turned right around and said, "well if you volunteer me then I volunteer you to sing with me." They accepted as well as I and we had a great musical number singing "Army of Helaman". I want to give you the words to 2 verses that we changed when Elder Rudd, Elder Nelson, and myself sang:

"We have been called by Father above,
to serve His children and labor with love.
We will go out His word we'll obey,
to bring Him souls the Savior's way.

We know the truth and so we declare,
to read and ponder and kneel in prayer.
We will proclaim in these latter days,
to be obedient and keep His ways."

I got emotional singing these verses because they mean so much to me about what I'm doing here in Pocatello. I will go forth and I will declare His gospel "in His way, by His power." How grateful I am to have this opportunity in my life to serve my brothers and sisters and declare the most important message this world has ever heard. God loves us. Jesus is the Christ. I bear you my witness of them as His authorized representative.

All is well here. I love what I'm doing. I love Idaho. Thanks for the prayers and thoughts I appreciate them so very much.

--
Peace and Love,
Elder Walker