Playing catch up ...

The following are excerpts from the last couple of emails that Dereck has sent.

5/17/10 -- Well everything here is great!!! We are really focusing on finding in our area. We are seeing lots of people progress but we are trying to see that we have people to follow up in there foot steps.
In the YSA there is a young man named Kam. He has been around missionaries who push and push for quite some time so he is a little frustrated with them right now. But we were invited over to help him with his yard. So we dug out a tree stump and the whole time he wanted to talk about the gospel. So we talked about the gospel! Now we are teaching him. Also we get to do yard work again!!! I love it.
Well I thought I had seen it all.. Well I was wrong. I got flashed for the first time by a guy today... it was really disturbing.... I was talking with President Morris on the phone out on our porch... well there was this guy who was standing out there a little suspicious. He was walking around in a towel. But we are in Phoenix its a little normal to see things out of the ordinary. Well. I get done with the call and go back inside practicing my golf swing, waiting for my turn to enjoy a nice relaxing shower.. Well I hear this hey coming from outside. Well I went out side and there was this kid asking if I had seen his cat well no cuz they are everywhere in our apartment complex so how was I supposed to know if it was his. Well then he goes well I have a question and then there went the towel... man I wish I had a golf ball in my hand. It would have been no longer in my hand and would have thrown right at him. Anyways, a funny story.
5/3/10 -- We had zone leader council this week. It was really good. Our baptisms as a mission were really low. President Beck just got back from a presiden'ts council with area mission presidents. I guess that missions are teaching the first discussions in ten minutes. Well elder Burris and I had the outline for it, but never actually did it. I had a sweet experience this week. I went on an exchange with the assistants. We tracted for 6 hours that day. We only talked to about 5 or 6 people the whole time. Basically the entire area could be compared to all the big houses in North Farmington, maybe even bigger. It is difficult to be able to actually find people
who want to listen because the people all go to a local church (who teach false doctrine about us by the way). We knocked on this one door, one of the last ones. The guy was raised LDS until he was like 6 than something happened and his family left the church. He now belongs to the big local church like the rest of the people in that part of town. Well, he let us in. Elder Carver, one of the AP's just started into the 10 minute thing. It was good. Then we just kept it going. As we finished teaching about Christ's earthly ministry he caught were it was all going. He realized why we felt there needed to be a restoration, then we got talking about baptism. He felt that it was just to show commitment and only if you wanted to do it. We helped him see in the bible, which I don't know very well by the way, how important baptism is and that you need to have the gift of the holy ghost by the laying on of hands. It was really cool . I was shaking like a baby rattle, but the spirit was really strong. It was one of the first times one of these types of things didn't turn into a bash. We will see if anything came of it. Who knows!
4/26/10 --We had a zone meeting this week. In our zone meeting we talked about setting goals, not only setting goals, but how to accomplish them. It was great. I have been learning more of the aspects of setting goals. It has to do with the things that we desire, what we are willing to do, and what we want in life. I was reading a talk from Elder Ballard. He said something was very profound to me. He said life is like a river that we are trying to walk up. Why do we spend so much time watching the water run DOWN hill? Why are we trying to walk up backwards and watch the things of the past while we run into the things we weren't expecting? If we will just turn our heads and focus on the future and not the past, than we will be able to find where to go and will be able to see where the shallow parts of the river are. We will be able to see where the holes are, where the currents to take us back are. If we will look forward with our goal setting than working to accomplish them we will be able to overcome a lot of the trials and problems as we focus on the more important things. I know that this is true. I have seen it and applied it in my life. It has blessed me immensely.