Elder Struve & San Francisco

This week has been crazy!

First off, I met my trainee, Elder Struve. (It's spelled like stroove, but it's pronounced like struvie) He's from Virginia, but has also lived in France and Austria. He's great! I can't really see us getting into any arguments. He's just very easy-going (and kinda soft-spoken). He's taken five years of Spanish in high school, so he has a big head-start on the language. plus, he's already super familiar with Preach My Gospel. He's already memorized the lessons in order. He basically came pre-trained. So far, this is looking to be a pretty good transfer for us! :)

Being back in San Francisco is pretty weird! I've been able to meet a few of the members I knew from before, but most of the people we work with are all new. So I'm still a little bit lost as far as names/faces goes. Plus, I've almost completely forgotten the bus schedule/routes... So we've gotten lost a couple of times. :) It's been fun.

When we got to our area, we replaced the other two elders here. They both made it a point to tell me that San Francisco is dead and that it's been a hard couple of transfers for them. But I didn't want my trainee getting that impression about his first area right away.. So when I picked him up, I gave him the best review of San Francisco, and how fruitful it is, and how great our investigators have been lately. And then we just went to work!!

Well, this first week definitely showed some results of the combination of an optimistic outlook and willingness to work!

In the last 4 days, we've set 2 new baptismal dates! :)

One of them is with Raul Arteaga, who has been an investigator for a few months now.. We read on his teaching record that he "can't get baptized because he has been living with a woman for 30 years, and they're not married." But we went ahead and re-invited him and after some discussion, he committed to get married to her so that he can be baptized! :) WHOOO!

The other date is with Ana Villanueva, who is a lady in her 60s who works 2 jobs and is living in a tiny apartment with 4 other people. Super poor, and can't get work off on Sundays because she needs the money to pay rent. Well, we set a date with her, and committed her to ask for Sundays off within the next week. So we're hoping she pulls through with that. We plan to have our own little mini "Family Home Evening" with them tonight and we're hoping we can really commit her to it with our lesson tonight.

Elder Struve and I have really put a focus on Member Trust. If the members trust you, that makes missionary work so much easier.. But we've been talking a lot about how having members "trust" you is different than having members "like" you. And how they need to be able to see us as obedient, personable, doctrinally sound, competent missionaries, rather than the "fun" missionaries or the "cool" missionaries. He's so good though. Little bit quiet, but he's great. :)

We're gunna kill it.

Love you all! Thanks for the email!