Marine Recruits on Parris Island

Hi Mom!

I'm glad you enjoyed the Valentine's photo - it took about 15 tries to get it right!  No worries on not remembering Valentine's day; I probably wouldn't have either if I didn't have a cool bike light toy to play with and make fun pictures!  =D

Is Bro. Bingham teaching the Old Testament class outside of regular school hours or is this for his usual students as well?  I remember he used to be an institute instructor, so maybe he wants to have another class with a bit more mature student body?  =P

This past week, Elder Bishop and I had to be down in Jacksonville (again) for all day Wednesday and Thursday, so we decided to take a gamble and leave our two new missionaries alone to work here in Beaufort after a week in the field. I know Elder Cancel was pretty stressed about it, but Elder Craynor loved the challenge and overall, I think they had a good experience.

The devil has distracted Judy.....she still wants to be baptized, but a lot of things suddenly cropped up over the past two weeks that have kept her from reading, coming to church, seeing us, etc, so we'll see if she's really determined to get there or not. We have found a couple of incredible new investigators though!  One is a man named Howard. We tracted into him last Sunday, and he told us he was busy, but to come back sometime.  We didn't think much of it, but a few days later when we were in the same area, we swung by and he invited us in and started peppering us with questions. Long story short, he's known members here in Beaufort all his life, but never has known what a "mormon" is and is exceedingly curious! He even fed us dinner that night so that we wouldn't have to leave and could tell him more!  We saw him two days later and he apologized for "only" getting as far as halfway through 1 Nephi!  The Philippino/Catholic lady has been coming to church the past two weeks and really enjoys the ward so far...it helps that she's practically surrounded by members in her neighborhood too!  She has worked into the word social scheme very well, but we'll see how well the actual BofM and gospel reach her.

Aha! I nearly forgot!  I have also been assigned as the new Parris Island group leader for all of the LDS marine recruits!  Yesterday was my first Sunday out there and it was fantastic!  The recruits love church (it's the only time away from drill instructors) and we have loads of non-members that come to sacrament meeting and sunday school. One who has come two weeks in a row and started reading the Book of Mormon already says she has her answer and wants to be baptized before she graduates. It's kinda like being back in a single's ward - all the people are my age, and they are so easy to identify with and teach.  These next few months out there should be a lot of fun.

Well, I haven't had much time at all to be on Facebook this last week, so I've not yet perfected its use (especially since I didn't use it too frequently before the mission), but the idea is pretty much the same as regular missionary work:  go where the people are.  I'm expected to work with the members online to get referrals, teach their friends, spark interest in the gospel, etc.  Right now, Elder Cancel and I have found several of our current investigators and part members online and use it as just another tool to stay in daily contact with them, see how their reading has gone, what questions they've encountered, etc.  So, yeah, I keep track of lessons taught, referrals received and contacted, new online investigators....all the usual numbers that they ask us to keep track of in regular face-to-face missionary work as well. The scriptures are all online at http://scriptures.lds.org/ so often I send links to people with particular passages highlighted. There are also a bunch of videos on Mormon.org, conference talks, and other things that I can direct people to if I think it will help meet their needs and spark a desire to learn more. It is meant to always lead to contact in the real world though.

Well, my time is up.  I love you all!

Elder M.