Elder Anthony James Holt: Missionary Work (8-8-16)

If someone were to ask me how missionary work feels, I can only think of one word: Exhausting. I swear, 18 months of the mission hit me like a ton of bricks this last week and I was seriously questioning if I would be able to make it, haha. But that was just because I found myself dozing off every 10 minutes of my studies, but it is whatever. I thought on the mission I would start needing less sleep after a while, but really I just started learning how to survive when I am tired, haha. But yeah, don't get me wrong, I love the mission, but I also love naps, and it has been so long since I have had a good one. During the week we have been working on getting our investigators ready for baptism. Then on friday at our weekly planning session we had a scary realization. We have been working really hard with our families and other investigators that our finding efforts have weakened quite a bit, and after this weekends baptism we will literally have only one investigator. So we will be working really hard this week finding, so we can keep on baptizing. This branch is on fire. Yesterday was super historic here in our branch. We had the highest sacrament meeting attendance of all time since the creation of this branch, 188, over a hundred people more than we had at my first sacrament meeting. It has truly been a miracle to witness. Our biggest goal is to get 200 people, I promised President Koch that we could get it by the end of August and we are only 12 people away, please #prayfor12. Our biggest struggle after that is to get some more young missionaries on their missions and to send some families to the temple. There is really no drive to get anyone to the temple, I think that is because no one has been and so they do not really know the blessings well enough to encourage it. But we will send our branch president this month with his wife, so that is a start. Other than that we will finally have the baptism of Mario and Luisa this weekend, and a few other baptisms. Unfortunately the others we had planned for this weekend forgot to come to church yesterday and so we will have to push their dates back a little bit. But we are looking really good as a zone. Elder Taukiuvea and I have a goal to be the highest baptizing zone in the mission. We are a little prideful of our zone, but we are also really proud of the work our missionaries our doing. We were 2nd two transfers back, and third this last transfer, and we have fewer missionaries than any other zone. But based on our forecasts for the transfer it looks as though we will be able to get it if everything goes super well. But the mission is good, I am not too trunky, and I love and miss you all.

Love,

Elder Anthony Holt

Some scenic pics from the area, Sister Mila, some random anchors in our area...