Letter from July 18th

Yes Milwakee is still in Oregon. I'll have to admit the names of places out here are really weird and the only city I knew about before I came her was Portland. Ha ha! That's great that Michelle did that, she's a great person. When I get letters from her I always have a stronger determination for missionary work.

The first week as a trainer has been awsome!!! My companion Elder Reed is very prepared for the work, it's amaizing! They started this new program for introducing new missionaries into the field and I think I'm one of the first to try it out. For about 12 weeks we are given an extra hour of companion study each day and each week it has outlined different things to studie. As we've followed our studies I've deffinatly felt that these have been my best comp studies so far. We get a lot done but we are also really able to aply it to the investigators as we go. One of the things that it does is to get the new missionary to take the lead in different things, and that has been my stance as a trainer is whenever he is willing to take the lead I let him, and of course help him along the way. I've seen it make a lot of difference in him as he does, and he's one of those that almost naturally does it. The experience as a trainer has deffinatly helped me a lot as well. I do my very best to set an example he can look back to for the rest of the mission, but I can slowly feel it change my attitude for the better in a lot of areas. It also is setting an example I can look back to for the rest of my mission as well. One example is, I wanted him to be comfortable with tracting and talking to people so every day that we can we are going to get at least a full hour of tracting. As we've been doing that I've seen even though it may not be very productive in getting new investigators it's productive internaly and helps me to work on relying on the spirit more. This is an amaizing opportunity wich I am very grateful for!

This week we taught Hailey (PM investigator) about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and strongly stressed getting her own answer to her prayer and coming to church. She came to church this last Sunday wich was awsome! French's (PM family) we had a prayer and discussed the atonement of Jesus Christ. Brother French is the non member and he didn't talk but he stayed and listened and I think it was really good for him because I think he started to get teary eyed while we were talking. Ashley (investigator) she came to us with troubles she was having in her relationship and we taught the law of chastity in depth to her situation. We left her with The Family Proclamation and I think it helped her a lot. Bess' (less active) we read the Book of Mormon with them, we decided to start from the begining and explain it as we go. when we were wrapping up Brother Bess mentioned that he was just getting interested, so I think we're heading down the right path with him. We also taught a couple member's soon to be 8 year olds, which is a really great practice opportunity because you have to teach it simply and have to be able to define a lot of words.

I've been doing awesome, as a trainer I feel my strength to be a leader and my determination to do the right thing drastically increasing. It's deffinatly an amaizing feeling to grow this quickly. I love this work!!!

Love ya mucho,
Elder Forsyth