March 23, 2016 Yay! Bap Dates!

Solid week, we've been seeing some cool progression with some of our investigators, and we had a former come out of the blue that is super excited and ready to go. We had a pretty cool thing happen to us on Friday. We teach this kid who's been getting taught since October that has a bunch of family that are members of the church but neither of his parents are. His parents are separated and his dad, even though not interested himself, has always supported his son meeting with the missionaries and joining the church. His mom however, has not been down and we have been told that she is opposed to the church. On Friday, for what we're pretty sure is the first time since he started getting taught, we got to meet with his mom. It was pretty cool, at first she seemed a little closed and cold, but then we showed her and her son "Hallelujah", the church's new Easter Initiative video. After the video she seemed visibly touched and really warmed up to us, and after a short discussion about the church she consented to her son getting baptized, we set a date in mid April. It was a cool experience to see somebody's heart soften to us on the spot like that. Of course it took a lot of time seeing her son change, learn and grow, but the switch happened during the video because of the Spirit.

On Sunday we had a pretty cool meeting with the Stake Presidency and President Smith in New Canaan. I'm not really sure what to call it but it was like "Stake Correlation". I was surprised at how productive it was because my last companion told me that at the last one that the zone leaders were able to go to they didn't even need to be there. But at this one they asked us questions, asked for feedback, gave us suggestions, some of which are really bold and I would be afraid of offending members had President Checketts not told us to do it, and President Stauffer even had a referral for the Norwalk Spanish Sisters. All in all, a really productive meeting. A kind of funny thing happened, President Potter had walked in a little late so we hadn't had the chance to say hi, so after President Checketts asked me to say the closing prayer President Potter realized that he knows me.  So right after the kind of uncomfortable prayer (I don't feel comfortable praying out loud in English anymore) he got up and said across the table something like "Hey, I know you!" came over, and gave me a hug. It was pretty good timing I'm not going to lie. I also met another person that said he knows me but that I don't know him, I think his name is Brother Ward but I'm not 100% sure, we didn't get a chance talk for very long, does that sound familiar?

Thanks for the Package! The candy is tasty, and the decorations are cute. We already put up the pictures of Christ banner. Thanks for everything, and have an Awesome Easter! I Love You!

Con Amor,
Elder Sam McBride