Transfer Week! June 23

Dear Family, This past week has been another good week... but a hard week as well. I have never been punted (that's the term we use when our apointments and plans fall through) as much as I have this past week. It happened with investigators, recent converts, less-active members, new contacts and just about every one we could think of. However despite of this all we saw the Lord's hand in the work and were had some awesome unexpected opportunities. One of the Success's of the week was having 3 less-active Melchizedek priesthood holders attend church yesterday. All three of these members are good friends and have all been part of a bishopric. We have been working with them for a long time now and they finally came to church!! It has been a long process due to many concerns but they are finally feeling the joy of the Gospel in their lives again. We were able to visit them more times this because of all appointments that fell through and I think that, that is one of the main reasons why they decided to come to church. It's always exciting to see priesthood holders come back from inactivity! Over the past two weeks Elder Revillo and I decided to use the Book of Mormon more in our teaching. We always use the Book of Mormon but usually we only use a few verses about whatever principle we are teaching. We decided that the thing that would help our investigators , recent converts, and less-actives the most would be simply reading the Book of Mormon. What we have been doing is choosing some of our favorite chapters in the Book of Mormon (ex, Nephi, the Anti-Nephi-Lehi's, the strippling warriors, Lehi's dream ect...) and reading them with whoever we are teaching. Because of this we have seen big changes in the people we teach. They are now excited to read the Book of Mormon and are reading on then own. Because they are reading, they are also coming to church. The Book of Mormon combined with the spirit truly is the most powerful tool in conversion and we all need to feast in it's pages everyday. This past week when we were teaching a referral from Mary Grace (the recent convert from Hawaii) we were teaching about baptism. It was a super powerful lesson and both of our investigators commited to baptism this July! However we asked one of them to say the closing prayer and when she was praying she prayed about Joseph Smith, the Church and Baptism. She started crying and had a hard time finishing her prayer. She didn't know why she was crying because she was happy and her sister was able to explain that it was the spirit. It was a powerful spiritual confirmation to everyone in the room of the Truth fullness of the Gospel and how the Lord answers our prayers through the Holy Ghost. As the subject of my email says it's now transfer week... Usually we don't know what transfers are going to take place until tuesday night but we had our Stake Missionary Correlation meeting yesterday with President Martino and our stake president here and President Martino told me drumroll please........ neither of us will be transfered! This means I will be here in San Jose until the second week of August! I get to go 6 months here. I have been blessed in my mission to be able to spend a good amount of time in all of my areas. I really love San Jose so it will be good to spend another 6 weeks here. I love the ward, my investigators and the less-active's I am working with. I'm excited to keep seeing the progression of San Jose ward 1. I love being a missionary! I just really really Love it! I feel so blessed to be here in San Jose. President told us there are going to be a lot of changes in our zone this week and I am excited for what will happen and for the great work we will do this transfer. mahal ko kayo Love Elder Leishman