Mission P-day Today!!!

Sorry this email is a bit later than usual. We've had a crazy amazing day. So 3 weeks ago the APs challenged us as a mission to find 250 new investigators and set 33 baptismal dates in 3 weeks, and if we did that, then we would be having a mission p-day. Most of us thought it was not really going to happen because 250 is heaps, but we found 296 new investigators and set 40 baptismal dates. It's amazing the things that can happen when you set your goals high AND have a reward for achieving said goals. So our day started at 6:30 where most of our zone met at a park and practiced our rugby skills. We did that until about 7:30 and then went home, showered and got ready, and then by 8:30 went to the shops to buy our zone uniforms. For the mission p-day there was an award for the best dressed zone and an award for overall winners of the 3 sports we played (rugby, basketball, and ultimate frisbee). So we went to buy our uniforms which were just pink polos and anything else pink that we could find to wear. I got some pink shoelaces for my converse, some got pink cowboy hats, we all had pink face paint like the stuff football players wear, it was mad. We ended up winning the best dressed zone, so at least we won something haha. It was really good just to see everybody though at the same time. It's pretty rare for the whole mission to get together somewhere, especially for something like this, so it was way fun. We did ok in the sports though, well in rugby anyways. We didn't lose a single rugby game, got 3rd place (out of 4) in basketball which I was the team captain for, and dead last in ultimate frisbee. I think out of the 4 or 5 games of frisbee that we played, we only scored once or twice haha. Good times though. I hope we get to do that again sometime.

This week has been really busy. Not only because we've been trying to find new investigators like crazy, but because of the planning of Angela's baptism. By the way, we found 5 new investigators this week, that's the highest we've ever found in a week in this area since I've been here, so we were pretty proud about that. In fact, I think for the last week of the challenge, as a mission we needed 102 new investigators and our zone alone found something like 58, so that was awesome.

We've been driving all over the place trying to get this baptism planned this week. As you know, she wants to be baptised in the ocean. So we've been driving all along the beaches around here to look for a place that would be private enough and that would be good for having a baptism. We found one place that we liked, but it's like 20 kms away. And when we told Angela about it she said that it wasn't the place she had in mind, so we had to drive back and try to find this place that she was describing to us and we couldn't find it anywhere. She couldn't even find it on the map so I don't know why we went and tried to look for it. It will probably end up being at the place we picked out but we have to go and see Ange tomorrow and finalise it. We'll probably have her go with us to the place or follow her to her place that she seems to know. Another complication that we've run into is that with the baptism being at 4:30 on a week day, nobody from the bishopric can be there, our ward mission leader can't be there, we finally ended up getting the High Priest group leader to be able to come, so he'll be the presiding authority at the baptism. We were talking to Brother Foot, our ward mission leader and he was saying that he's actually been to a couple of ocean baptisms and all that happens is probably just an opening prayer, a few remarks from... somebody, the performance of the baptism, then closing prayer and go home. We'll probably have Elder Murray say a few things since he's the one baptising her and he seems to be able to connect with her unlike any of us can. Overall, it looks like it should be an alright baptism, it's just the planning of that has been hectic. It's taken up a lot of our time this week, as well as reteaching Angela all of the lessons again. This week we taught her about prayer because we found out that she doesn't know how to say a proper prayer. And we also taught her about sabbath day observance because we found out that she goes to the markets after church on Sunday. It's amazing the things you find out a week before the baptism.

We finally got to see the Preedy's yesterday after almost 2 weeks of not being able to come over. Ever since they found out that she's pregnant again he's started working more, even picked up a night job, and so he's busy as. He says that he's going to drop the night job though. He wants more time to be able to spend with his family and with 2 jobs, he's just not getting it. It was good though seeing them last night. His sister has just recently moved in with them and she's a less active member, so we had a really good lesson with them about Helaman 5:12. Shay gave most of the lesson though, we just started talking about it and went into building our foundations upon Christ a little bit and then he pretty much took it away from there. His testimony is amazingly strong. They are so going to make it to the temple in April. He actually gave a talk in church yesterday and it was really good especially since he said that he didn't have any time to prepare it. He even got a bit emotional near the end when he was baring his testimony, which I've never seen him do. You could tell he was feeling the spirit. And he bore his testimony again when we were having that lesson with them last night. You could tell that Ruth even has a pretty good testimony for only being a member for 6 months now. She was trying to get her sister (who also lives with them) to participate in the lesson and was asking her questions and all that. She really wants her sister to know what she knows. Just a really good time last night. I can't wait for them to go to the temple in April, that will just help their testimonies that much more.

Speaking of temples, I saw on LDS.org that they just had the ground breaking ceremony for the Rome, Italy temple. How cool is that? I never thought I'd see the day that there would be a temple just down the road from the Vatican. That's how you know this church is growing all over the world. Even in Catholic central, they have enough members to need a temple. I just thought that was a nifty bit of information I'd share in case you all didn't already know, but you probably did.

I'm attaching some pictures from our Mission p-day, hope you enjoy them.

Much love! Have a fantastic week!

Elder Clark Tanner