June, 23, 2013- Myakka Sate Park

Dear Family and Friends,

This last week had
A been much better than previous weeks.  Although we still didn't have
too many lessons, we were able to make a bunch of great contacts with
and visits with people who we never had been able to make contact with
them, or it's been a long time.

For family home evening on Monday night, we went to the and had a fun
time playing a Bible Edition of Apple to Apples that we got at a
Christian store here. We are trying to help their son want to go on a
mission right now instead if the military, and will try to get him to
come out with us sometime.

On Tuesday morning we went and had a lesson with Brother Strattman and
showed him the Will of God Mormon message which is another one of my
favorites.  We the meet up with the Sister missionaries and did some
ward roster work.  Just going through it and identifying and talking
about the people we visit, who we didn't know at all, and those who
are do not contact.   We only got about half way through the 28 pages
of members, and there are still quite a few who we realized we didn't
know about.  For the rest of the day we spent some time trying to
contact a bunch of this people, and all of them had moved out of our
area.

We had a great combined zone district meeting on Wednesday.  Probably
one of the best trainings/role plays I've seen on extending a
baptismal date.  We also talked about the goals for number of baptisms
for the month of June for the Zone.  The goal it ten baptism and there
have already been five, and as of right now ten more have dates set
for this month.  In the evening we had three great lessons.  The first
was with the Perez family. It's been a while since we had been able to
visit with them and the kids we super happy that we came by again.
It's hard to go and visit them since we have moved farther away and
that they aren't in our area.  We did a handoff lesson with the
Bradenton elders, but when ever we are close by we will stop and visit
with them to check and see how they are doing.  We then went and had a
lesson with the Innes' which are another one of my favorite families
to go and see.  Last night we gave Sister Innes the missionary library
so that she could read through that.  Hopefully we didn't overwhelm
her with so many books,  but I thinks that she will love reading them.
Tonight we read through the 13 Articles of Faith and talked about them
as we did so.  The last lesson of the evening was with Kyle over
Skype, and we read through Mormon 6 with him.  This was the chapter
that the missionaries in Virginia gave to him to read, so we read
through that and talked about how blessed we are to have the words of
prophets from generations ago, and then gave him some more chapters to
read.

Thursday morning we went and helped Elder and Sister Greenwood cut
down and clean up some trees at Sister English's home.  Doing service
projects is one of my favorite things to do, and we are always looking
for different ways to help out.  After that, we finished up our weekly
planning, and went less active contacting the rest of the day.  Once
again, just about everyone that we tried has ended up moving out of
the area to who knows where.  We did get in with one less active who
we have just talked at the door previous times.  We stayed there for
about twenty minutes and just got to know him some more.  He shared
with us some great stories about how is was able to receive his
testimony of the truth and he had some pretty incredible experiences.

We had another service opportunity to help Sister Brooks move things
from one trailer, to another one right next door.  It was a pretty
warm and humid day.  It's close enough to summer now, and tomorrow is
officially the first day of summer.  We went and visited with Leroy in
the afternoon and had a good lesson on he plan of salvation.  Leroy
really liked learning about the spirit world and what happens after
death.  That he will be able to see his parents and his little kid
that died again.  We committed him to coming to church and he finally
committed to come this time, telling us that he needs to start coming.
So we set up a ride to go and pick him up Sunday morning with Brother
Gheldof.  In he evening we went and visited with John again.  He was
telling us all about his Bahai Religion again and we couldn't get much
in.  He absolutely loves Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and D&C.
We started reading from the beginning in of he BofM then he started
jumping around in lots of different chapters telling us what they
meant.  He is a super nice and awesome guy, but we probably won't be
spending too much time there.

Brother Hoynacki was gone this week for ward correlation, so we just
got together with the Sisters again and finished our ward roster work.
Finally done with going through who everybody is and figuring out
whose area that they live in.  For dinner we went to Bro Balle's
house.  He is the Elders Quorum President and a super awesome guy.  He
invited one of his friends Brother Brown from the Palmetto ward to the
dinner as well.  We talked about missionary work and what they can do
to share the gospel with their friends.  Like creating a Mormon.org
profile and posting it on Facebook so that all can see it.  Brother
Balle also asked about people he could help fellowship, and about
people on his home teaching list.  The rest of the day we didn't have
too many lessons, but we did have some good contact with people we
hadn't gotten a chance to meet yet.

I'm still pretty tired from waking up at 4:45am yesterday morning. We
had a Stake and Ward Council training at 6:30am for all of the ward
councils in the stake.  President Cusick and Elder Thompson gave the
training on how missionaries and members can work together.  That
members don't have to make time for us to come by, but just need to
invite us to their daily activities.  For example going to members
work places, or joining families for activities such as soccer games
and concerts.  It was a really good training and I enjoyed listening
to both speakers because they were energetic for it being 6:30 in the
morning and having to keep everyone awake.  Leroy, as well as a bunch
of other investigators and less actives didn't show up to sacrament
meeting today.  We thought that it was going to be a great day today
but we thought wrong. Leroy was ready to go and said that he wasn't
feeling too well to go to church when we stopped by to pick him up.
Both of the appointments that we had scheduled this evening canceled
on us, so we went and visit with Sister Innes and answered some of her
questions from reading through True To The Faith.

This morning we went out to Myakka State Park and just got back from
that.  We had a bunch of fun going out and seeing parts of Florida.
We saw one wild boar, some small fallow deer (about the biggest deer I
have seen in Florida). Just today alone we saw 18 alligators, the
biggest being about eight feet long.  The count for my mission is now
53 gators, and 2 crocodiles.  I will send a few pictures in a
different email for you.

Loves you all, and I pray that everything is going well for you.

Lover,
Elder Leavitt