Elder Thomas Pilkington: May 28, 2015

Buenas tardes!

I have set several new goals for the last two transfers of my mission.
The first one and the one that can affect you the most is my goal to
send a weekly blog email. I've been pretty bad about that over the
last several months, but I want to keep you involved more often.

We just finished another transfer. I spent the last 7 weeks in
Snowflake with Elder Rayas as the Snowflake Zone Leaders. It was a fun
transfer with lots of neat things happening, but it was a stressful
one for me. I'm glad it's over and new things are happening in the
area. I'm staying in Snowflake another 6 weeks as one of the zone
leaders in the zone. My new companion is Elder Holladay, who was
previously a district leader in the same district as me in Snowflake.
I'm part of a split zone leader companionship, which means Elder
Holladay isn't the other zone leader. He's spending this transfer as a
'zone leader in training' kind of thing. My 'zone leader companion'
is serving about 45 minutes away in a town called Heber. I've been
told that after this transfer I'm heading to the valley again to
finish my last transfer in Spanish work.

So many neat things have happened over the last week.
1. We received our iPads! To some, it may be concerning that 85,000 of
the Lords servants are now able to use technology, and that's an
understandable concern. I see this as an incredible opportunity to
share the gospel of Jesus Christ even more during our service period
as well as a chance for us to develop positive habits with technology
that will allows us to avoid/overcome future obstacles related to
technology.

2. One of our longtime investigators announced over the pulpit on
Sunday that she's going to be baptized before she goes to college. She
is part of a family that is half LDS and half Catholic. Her mom is an
amazing lady who loves her family, those around her and the Lord. She
has been raised catholic though, which has made it difficult to do too
much teaching. After graduating seminary and being around members of
the LDS church, she decided to make the decision. We met with her on
Monday afternoon and she set a date for the 3 of June. Luckily, we've
taught all she needs to know without actually teaching in a typical
sit down lesson setting. Her interview is tonight, and she'll be
baptized in a week!

3. We also have 3 more people on date. One of them is a
15 yr old who will be baptized early in June, another who will ALSO be baptized early in June, and another who has a date for late July. We are working hard with multiple
other people who have studied the church out in their minds and have
born testimony to us that they feel it's truthfulness. Their biggest
issues are smoking for some and difficulty with commitment for the
others.

I continue to be a witness of the Lord's hand in our lives. He has
always and will always love us for who we are and is always open to
helping us grow. I'd be lying if I denied the power of the priesthood
that I've felt throughout my life. I know the Lord restored that power
and many other truths through the Prophet Joseph Smith, and those
truths continue to be the building blocks for the restored church of
Jesus Christ that we have again on the earth.

'Doubt your doubts BEFORE you doubt your beliefs.'

Elder Pilkington

Sent from my iPad