Gainesville 3rd Ward ROCKS! - February 20th, 2012

Dear Family,

This week has been absolutely MIRACULOUS!!!! Be prepared to be blown out of your chair :) You better put on some seat belts.

First of all, we have so many SOLID potential investigators I don't even know what to do with them. I think they might need to put another set of missionaries here next transfer - haha. So I was on a trade off, I was in High Springs. My District Leader was with Elder Riggs in our area, and they went and talked to our NEIGHBOR... she is ELECT! HOLY COW!... she is absolutely incredible I have received a strong testimony that Elder Riggs and I were sent here to find her specifically. She came to church with her 3 kids yesterday. She is incredible. She has a fiance who also wants to learn more. It is wonderful. We have another appointment with her today.

Elder Riggs and I were seeing a Media Referral and they weren't there so we decided to tract a little bit. The second door we knocked we just started talking and the lady said "I believe it". We thought she might have been a member at first but then we found out she wasn't. She was given a Book of Mormon in the hospital or something and she believes it and wants to learn more. We are going back today. She is married and has at least 3 kids that I saw.

Over the last 2 weeks we have received over 20 referrals. We have really gained the trust of the ward and it is going INCREDIBLE. This ward is very missionary oriented. I wouldn't mind serving here for the rest of my mission haha.

We are definitely seeing the blessings of the Lord here in this area. I love it! Gainesville 3rd ward is AMAZING!

There are many more miracles than that... but for the sake of time I won't share them all until we shall meet face to face :) in a long time ;)

Speaking of which... Elder Riggs and I were doing a Companion Study on urgency and in order to do that we wanted to calculate up how much time we spend actually proselyting. So we found out that in 2 years as a REGULAR Proselyting Missionary you only spend a total of 6 months proselyting. 18 months is taken up with eating, sleeping, meetings.. etc. That is as a regular proselyting missionary. If you get called to train you get less. If you get in leadership you get less. If you become an assistant you only get about 4 1/2 months just becoming an assistant. So isn't that crazy? We really dont get too much time to find. In the process of finding this out. I also found out that I go home one week earlier than I thought I did because we were going through the schedule I saw that my last transfer ends on June 12th, so I will be flying home June 13th 2013.. I thought I was going home June 20th, so I dont even get to serve a full 2 years : ( I am 2 days short of 2 years :(  and I get one less week than I thought I did :(  so my urgency has really picked up and I have been trying to work harder.

Oh and Mom, we are doing a triathlon when I get home okay!? Well, 2 months after I get home... I will need some time to get into shape!

Everything has been going great and I am excited... I love y'all and I miss ya a ton! When I have time to even think about anything besides the hecticness of missionary work.. thats when I miss ya which isnt very much time.. haha.

Love
Elder Wise