Nice! I enjoy your letters and hearing from home!

Well this has been a wonderful week! I guess I'll start with last PDAY. Our district was heading to the temple, and Elder hundley, Elder Baker, Elder Shamanis, and I were a little bit late. When we got down into the basement where they rent clothes to the elders we saw a sign that said they needed help in the laundry that day, so instead of doing a session, we volunteered in the laundry! It was an awesome experience, I got to learn how they fold those socks and it was really fun! The good news with our investigators is that We finished teaching the plan of salvation to Natalia (Hermana Self) and we committed her to baptism!!! I love the opportunities we have to teach our teachers as investigators. I don't remember if I told you how they do it, but the teachers will take on a role of one of their previous investigators and we teach them the lessons! It rained a bit on saturday last week and its looking as if we're going to get some more today and tomorrow and possibly some snow, so we'll see if it happens! On sunday we got new zone leaders because the district above us was leaving on monday. Elder Farrel and Elder Brown in our district are the new zone leaders. Elder Farrel is from Preston Idaho and Elder Brown is from somewhere in utah. It was pretty crazy! The zone above us is gone and in less then 2 weeks we will be leaving too!!! Our fireside was about tithing, apparently it is a leading factor in people going inactive after baptism. If the missionaries don't teach tithing effectively, the converts won't get a firm testimony in it because they can't pay tithing until after baptism, and its sometimes hard for missionaries to teach it when they don't have a firm testimony of why it is important, because they haven't paid tithing on their mission, so Its important for us to study and pray about the law of tithe to learn to teach it effectively.

Monday, we committed Natalia to be baptized on November 30th, and she accepted so it was pretty much an awesome day. Even teaching the gospel to fake investigators is really rewarding!

Tuesday was awesome! Elder Tad Callister of the presidency of the seventy spoke to us about The apostasy

He said it is just as important to teach as the restoration, because without the apostasy, there would be no need for the restoration! I hadn't ever thought about it that way before.

anyway, he said the 10 evidences of the great apostasy are:

1. Apostles are killed. The apostles were critical to keep the doctrine pure, the church went from being led by revelation to being led by reason.

2. Scriptures foretold of it, in Amos 8:11, 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3 etc.

3. The Bible ends. The epistles were written to correct errors, and the bible ended in 100 AD, would the church really be perfect by then?

4. Dramatic loss of miracles and gifts of the spirit

5. Teachings of christ were lost

Eternal Marriage 1 peter 3:7

Nature of god, etc.

"Everything is now so entangled with these decrees that we dare not hope to call the world back to true christianity." -Erasmus

6. Ordinances altered or changed

Isaiah 24:5 Mark 10:16

Baptism by immersion etc.

7. Manner of Prayers

The enemy brakes the line of communication when attacking

No longer prayed in the name of Jesus Christ, started praying to saints

8. Scriptures only for clergy

"If the church of Jesus Christ had continued would they have taken the scriptures away from the people or made efforts to make the scriptures available to as many people as possible?"

9. Church no longer bore the name of Christ.

Apparently no church claimed that name before the 19th century

"I pray you leave my name alone and call yourselves not lutherans but Christians." -Martin Luther

10. No priesthood,

no line of authority, people with out authority ordained bishops.

And then he compared the church to a plane that had an engine caught on fire, the pilot isn't going to dive straight for the earth, the pilot is going to land as steadily and slowly as possible to ensure a safe landing, so it was with The Church of Jesus Christ, our Heavenly Father waited and prepared for the safest time to bring his church back so that it would never apostasize again!

on wednesday we got a new district in our zone, apparently we got a ton of missionaries that day because were not getting any next week because of Thanksgiving. So its been pretty crowded. We had our last thursday night lights soccer game! Our zone has a tradition of playing soccer every thursday night for gym time and its a lot of fun. We won't be having it next week because of the Thanksgiving devotional and thats our last thursday in the MTC!

I got my travel plans yesterday! I can call next week to tell more, but I'll be flying from salt lake to pasco on the morning of November 29th and apparently we can also call from the airport. We'll see!

Well thats about it!