Elder Burch π: "I've got my body and my mind on the same page..."

Heh, greetings,

Alright, alright, alright, alright!

That family from the Congo? They are progressing splendidly! Not only is the father on date for baptism, but the ten-year-old son also. The baptism was pushed back from the 1st to the 8th for reasons, but they are on fire! As far as I know, we should be good. We didn't even ask them to, and they tossed out their tea when they learned of the Word of Wisdom. We'll be meeting with them tonight, as well as a couple nights this week. They are awesome, and I am excited to see them continue in the gospel. They've come to church two and a half times so far, and we are going to get them set up so that they can watch General Conference in their native tongues. (French for the dad, Swahili for the mom. Oh, yeah. The language barrier is why the mom won't get baptized as quickly. But after the dad gets there, we'll teach her and he'll translate and it'll be great and she'll be baptized, too!) So, we're excited for that.

On a slightly tilted note, I am excited to say that I helped an African American family into the waters of baptism. Elder Christensen calls that a blacktism. I'm excited for this blacktism.

Also, bishop gave us a referral for a guy who is currently in pre-release, and we met with him and he's looking to go to church. He's made some poor choices in his life, and the first time he was in prison, his wife met with the missionaries and totally turned it all around in three weeks and was baptized. At the time he wasn't so into that, but now he really wants that change for himself. He's a super nice guy, and he's been reading the Book of Mormon that they have at the correctional facility. That's pretty rad. I think we might give him over to the zone leaders because of the area. We'll talk with them. We are excited for him, too.

Elder Ray and I got ice cream at a Missoulian place called "Big Dipper Ice Cream," and it was super good. It was raining at the end of a good day and proved to be an excellent topper to a productive Tuesday.

Missoula's roads don't make sense.

Besides that, it has been finding, which has yielded mixed fruits. We're going to set ITL (invitation to learn) goals and hopefully boost our effectiveness this week. We're excited to see how it goes.

I left my journal in the apartment, and so I don't remember much else about this week. Ah, well. Those are the important points, I think. Keep being awesome.

Rock and roll ~

-Elder Burch π

"... and now happiness is all the rage."