April 9, 2013

Dear dad and grandma and everyone else, Well we got transfer calls last night. it looks like I'm staying here in Ceres 1st ward with elder vaughan! I'm excited to be here for 6 more weeks and to help our investigator progress towards baptism. I told Elder "V" that we are going to "work more smarter and not harder" and use our time effectively. I still can't believe how much time flies. This week we found new investigators. We taught them about God and about the Book of Mormon. We are going to give them a church tour next week and then invite them to be baptized! Not much else for this week, I enjoyed General Conference as always and loved Elder Holland's talk about faith. It is true, that it's alright to say "I believe...." if you can't say " I know...." Thanks for the funny pictures from brother Downey and of Bruce's puppies. By the way.. for my birthday I would like a puppy. (I will let you ponder about that) Well I got to go. love you all. -Elder DeMarco

April 3, 2013

Well things here are getting better. We still have 3 dates for this april. One of them is solid. President Gelwix and the Assistants gave us GREAT training last week. Every time President talks to us I feel chastised HaHa... but he always lifts us up at the end, he is the best! One of the things that was happening to our mission was that we have "spiritual ADD" meaning we have all these tools for missionary work but we can only focus on them one at a time. We have a district standard and then a zone standard and then a mission standard. So we are doing away with all those things and just focus on baptism! We need to rely more on God and the spirit for answers. I'm really excited the direction we are heading, as humans it's hard to focus on a bunch of stuff at once and not many people can do it. So by just focusing on 1 baptism a month minimum for each companionship then we can see more success......when I was a trainer I went to leadership training and this British business major person named Greg McKeown came in and talked to the mission. He is like a motivational speaker for businesses. He talked about "less, but better" and basically it means focus on the essentials each week and get rid of the things which are wasting time. It was an awesome training I hope to show you one day. I had a nice Easter Sunday and it was nice to see that James is getting skinner haha. love you all.
-Elder DeMarco

March 26,2013

This week had been fan-tast-ic! We set a baptismal date with April 13th. He is 22 yrs old and he has a great family. He came to church last Sunday and it was great to see him. We are seeing him again this Tuesday. During personal study this morning I was reading a talk called the "fourth missionary", which talks about there are 4 types of missionaries and we need to strive and be like the fourth missionary who is willing to give up his heart, mind and will to heavenly father. I was chastised by the spirit when I read that because there are some days I want to do things "my way". I just need to continually change and stop having an inner battle within myself and just do it his way. We are doing this project as a mission called "the Easter project" and we read about 1,000 references about Jesus Christ in the scriptures by August. President Gelwix asked us to do this because he wants us to be exactly obedient because we love Christ . I'm learning a lot from it and I know my love for the savior will increase because of it. Thanks for keeping me updated on how everyone is doing. love you all! -Elder DeMarco