July 11, 2011

Family,
Elder Phillips and I have started working at the Nauvoo Pageant. Wednesday we worked in the seating area and greeted people as they waited for the pageant to start. We mainly go around with referral cards asking everyone if they know anyone who would want the soundtrack of the pageant sent to any of their friends. It's a good way to get the missionaries to the door step of non-members. 80 out of every 1000 doors that we knock on and use the members name will receive the gospel. Not very effective, but better than tracting, its only about 1 though tracting. Last year the pageant received 12,000 referrals, kind of crazy. Elder Phillips got one referral the other day but I didn't get any. On Friday, we were assigned to hand out the pageant newspapers at the entry by the parking lot. There were some people in the parking lot handing out anti-Mormon newspapers that looked exactly like the ones the pageant hands out. So our job was to hand out the church published copies and get rid of the anti. It was fun.
We held a baptism on Saturday for M S. I don't know if I talked about her very much, her husband is a member, but has been less-active for a numbers of years. Her whole family came into town to see her baptized. She had a lot of questions and took a lot of visits. After her confirmation on Sunday, everyone was shaking her hand, and she whispered to me that all of this was able to happen because we "saw it through, and stuck in there". It was fun teaching her. She committed her husband to get sealed in the temple in Ireland, and wants Elder Phillips and I to go. I'll have to start saving money now-ish.
Not too much else has happened. The other day we committed two other people to baptism, A P and S L. A's is planned for the 30th and S's is planned for the 19 of Aug. We also had the chance to eat lunch with some members on Saturday. We ate at the Pier, a cool restaurant on the Mississippi.
I LOVE YOU ALL. -Elder Hale