"the look on his face was priceless!" (Sam)

January 20, 2014

Hi everyone!

Good to hear from you this week. Happy to hear you are well and busy. Sorry I couldn´t write last week. It was my bad. Today I´ll give a good update.

The mission is so different than when I came in. 80 percent of the areas have more than one companionship. Jerez, where I am right now, has three companionships. We are Jerez A.. I´m the district leader here and Elder Crandall just finished his training. Jerez B are the Hermanas Brown and Anderson and they are the sister trainers (what hilary was in her mish) which are basically the equivalent to a zone leader except they do the splits with the hermanas.. and Jerez C are the zone leaders Elder Vergara who I was companions with in Aljarafe and Elder Berrett, who trained me as Financiero. Really great group.

The ward here is growing soo quickly. With the three baptisms the ward had this weekend, I think there are 21 Recent converts in the last 9 months. Its incredible. Elder Crandall and I really wish there was more happening in our area.. but more than anything, we have been supporting the two other companionships with the last little push needed to get their investigators to the waters of baptism. This last week I did 5 baptismal interviews, 1 follow-up, and we taught two appointments to investigators that were not ours. We spend just as much time IN our area last week as we did OUT of our area. Like I said, we´d obviously like to see more success come from our area but we´re happy with the three baptisms that the hermanas had last week and the two the elders will have this weekend.

Really cool thing happened this last week. Elder Crandall, just starting his third transfer, has been stressing about a goal he set for himself. Its a great goal and I had the same one when I started. It was to baptize in every area. He´s a third into what will be his last transfer here and hasn´t baptized yet. Well to make a long story short, we´ve been working quite a bit the the hermanas investigators this week, Ph. from brasil and Al. from bolivia, and about mid-week, Al. called the hermanas and told them she wanted me to baptize her instead of what was previously planned. I was honored and accepted. On friday, we went back for a quick follow up interview with Ph. and at the end I mentioned how I thought it would be cool if Elder Crandall could be involved in the baptism since it would be his first. He said that he didn´t know what she would say but that he´d ask her. We finished the follow-up and we left. About 2 minutes later, I got a phone call from him saying that Al. loved the idea and wanted Elder Crandall to baptize her! :D I hung up and stopped Elder Crandall on the street and said, "hey, buckle up."... and he just looked at me weird... :P and then I said, "Al. wants you to baptize her." haha the look on his face was priceless! He was so happy and had a great experience saturday night. The baptisms went down perfectly. She was baptized the first try.. etc. :) So that was really fun.

Anyways, I know you wanted me to write more this week. Sorry I´ve run out of time. I´m going to try to send some pictures really quick. Love you all!

Élder Norton

ps.. I´ve started claiming all the advertisements that come in our mailbox cuz Elder crandall gets so many letters I have to boost my self confidence somehow! :D..... haha