Elder Rushton and Elder Mayfield

So like I said in chat, I’m staying in Warren for another transfer. That’ll keep me in Warren for a total of 6 months by the end of the next transfer which would make Warren my 3rd straight 6-month area. I stay in wards for a really long time! President Holmes called me Sunday night and asked me to be district leader again. I don’t mind doing it and I actually really like writing district meetings and instructions.

We’re getting a ton of new missionaries in these next two transfers. Tomorrow, 11 new missionaries come in and then the next transfer something like 23 new missionaries come in. We’re opening a ton of new areas in the mission. Warren is going to have two sets of Elders starting in the end of February. In fact, this whole district is getting 4 new areas opened up. My district consists of the Warren, Roseville, and North Shores ward which all right now have one set of Elders each, plus a senior couple serving in Roseville. By the end of February, Warren will have two sets of missionaries, Roseville will have two sets of missionaries, and North Shores will have three sets of missionaries, plus the senior couple in Roseville. That would mean this district would have a total of 16 missionaries which is insane. We’re thinking they’ll have to split the district in half because the District Leader has to go and spend a day with each missionary in the district once every transfer. If I had to do an exchange with 14 different missionaries, it’d take up half the transfer! But chances are I’ll leave Warren before all the new areas open up.

Our week this week was pretty great. We made a special point this week to go around and visit all of the part member families in the ward and we had some pretty good success. We have appointments set up with a couple of them for later in the week. We also had two part member families show up and church for the first time since I’ve been here and I attribute that to the fact that we made a special point to go and visit them. We had a very good turnout for church this week too and that’s probably because we’re at 11:00 now 😉

We’re really making an effort to get the home teachers involved with the less actives we’re teaching too. At correlation with our Ward Mission Leader this week we went over how the process of the Less Active ward referrals should work and then yesterday we brought it up with the bishopric as well. We’ve also been reporting to the home teachers about any time we see someone on their list, and we’ve also been making an effort to get the home teachers to come and teach with us when we see people on their list. We decided to do this after we met with our WML and he commented to us that he has 12 families to home teach and he doesn’t even know everyone on the list. I’ve heard similar things from other members so I decided that the best thing to do would be to try and introduce the home teachers to the people on the list they don’t know that we see. So far it has been working pretty well and we’ve really been trying to make the transition from us visiting less-actives every week, to the ward being much more involved in the reactivation process.

I can’t believe that time is flying by so fast! This last transfer was probably the fastest transfer of my mission! I’m starting transfer #15 today and you only have 17 total. It’s crazy how fast the mission goes!!

Well, hope you guys have an awesome week! Thanks for everything!