Since today is a holiday for most of the world, the office was not open. But we had some great experience. It started with District Meeting where we met with 10 missionaries and were taught about how to be better missionaries. Each time we meet I am more impressed by the quality and dedication of the Fort Lauderdale missionaries and especially those in this district. They set high standards and goals for their work and plans on how to achieve them.

Today the main training was about the conversion process with Elder George using Helaman 5:23-46 as an example. I got a lot out of this training and found things in this section of the scriptures that I had not noticed before.

The pictures above show two elders who are not normally at our DM. Elder Olson on the left serves in the Miami area and Elder Kealamakia is one of the Assistants and is usually with Elder Neeley.

Sister Hong led the music and I kind of hope she does not see this picture I took from just in front of her. She and her companion sister Holder are hard working and successful missionaries who seem to love their investigators into the Church.

The last picture is of the bagel shop where we ate lunch. Mary had a very good Ruben and I had a delicious chicken salad sandwich. The real treat of the lunch was one of the best cole slaws I have ever eaten.

We also had a nice experience when we came in. The mother of the owner brought us our menus and then noticing our name tags sat down and talked with us about Church – she did not know much about it – and her life. We could not believe that she must be 8 – 10 years older than we are because she looked younger. She is Jewish so I gave her a Family Forever pass-along card and told her she could learn more about the Church by going to mormon.org.

We got our weekly letter from President Anderson with this story that shows how the Lord has prepared ways for us to touch the lives of those who are ready. We just need to have the faith to inquire and then follow up.

““We felt like we needed to go through the former investigators in the area book to pray and find out who was ready to receive the missionaries again. As we went through about 100 old teaching records we prayerfully narrowed it down to 50… then 30… and then 20. We then prayed to know who we needed to go see today. He had been dropped after being taught almost everything … We went to go visit him and he was very open to having us come in and talk to him. We sat down with him and then left a blessing on his home. He got up wiping away tears and we knew it was his time to be baptized. We invited him to be baptized and he readily accepted. It’s amazing to see what happens when we rely on prayer and find those who are ready to accept the Gospel. I know that we were guided by the Spirit to him and because of our praying, our practicing (role plays), and planning, we were able to do what the Lord wanted us to do.”