February 23

Hola,

Well, this week was interesting.  More than anything, I learned this week that God truely does answer prayers.  I learned this because of something my companion, Elder Ortiz, told me.  He had a leadership conference that he went to on Wednesday, in which President Crickmore talked.  Elder Ortiz said that as part of this talk, he said that he was praying for all the missionaries in the mission to have problems, so that they could learn.  Well, God answered his prayer.  Not that this week was necesarily bad, just a bit more problematic than usual.  We had problems finding people in their homes, we had the weirdest divisions with the zone leaders that I have had in my entire mission, and I've had a lot of divisions with zone leaders.  Basically, it wasn't necessarily a bad week, but it's not a week I want to repeat any time soon.  Still, there was a lot of good as well, and I've felt God's love for me as well.

As far as the good things go, there's a pretty good list.  We found some pretty good new investigators this week.  They're pretty interested in learning more, but they've been pretty busy with school.  Their schedule is supposed to ease up in March though, so we'll see what happens with them.  We also had an investigator who left for some time return.  He's been progressing a bit slowly, but I still feel that we'll see good things from him, especially because he is really interested in the church, and his girlfriend is a member.  We also had a trip to the visitors center yesterday, which he came to.  He felt really good their, and I think it really helped him a lot.  I guess we did have a pretty good week all in all.

I'm sorry to hear that it's still super dry there.  I hope things change soon, the snow is the most important water that Utah gets every year.  Still, there's still time for a couple of good storms to help you out.  As far as the weather goes here, we still have a bit of time before the storms start up, but we've gotten a couple of showers.  More than anything, it's just hot.

I think that's about it for me.  I picked up my birthday package today, so don't worry about that.  One suggestion that somebody gave me about the packages is that there's a better chance of them getting here without problems if you put some catholic stickers on it, like Jesus or the Virgen.  Just an idea.  I love you, and I'll talk to you next week.

Love,

Elder Samuel Long