Motivation...I give that mostly to the Lord

Hello everyone!!

This week has been great! I've been feeling a lot better personally
and am doing a lot better. It's been easier to become motivated, and I
give that mostly to The Lord. I've been praying for a lot of extra
help lately and it's definitely been working! We've been so blessed!!

This week we tried to knock out a lot of lookups. Lookups are going
over to a less active members home or a former/potential investigators
home. There's a big long list of people that we've never seen before,
so we went through our area book and organized everyone by the town
they live in, and then we set a few days aside to just look them all
up. We've had a few things come up that have kind of prevented us from
starting, but we figure that's just a barrier we gotta overcome! We
are excited to get to know who everyone is so that we can break down
who we should spend more time going to go see.

Joel is being a bum. He hasn't answered any of our calls/texts since
our last lesson with him like a month ago. The sisters gave him a call
last week and guess what? ......he picked up right away. He told them
that he would give us a call but he hasn't yet. It's super
frustrating. It can be slightly annoying to share a ward with sisters
sometimes. They're always running into people like Joel who say that
they want missionaries to come over merely because they think it's
going to be those nice, pretty girls. Then as soon as we show up, they
just kind of drop off the face of the map. It happens a lot with
men...as you could probably guess haha. But it's just one little
annoyance, having sisters is actually really good for the work. Women
investigators connect so much more easily to them, so they progress a
lot faster!

Ummmm.....so we did have a miracle happen! So last Sunday, a man and
his son who are family to a SUPER less active lady came to church!!
The father comes every few weeks, but I haven't seen the son here
since I've been here! He's like 19 or so and is really nice! So on
Monday we went over to go see the dad, but the son, Darwin, was there
instead! We didn't have to even ask him, and he was like "yeah let's
sit outside, have a seat". He's not super interested in the church
quite yet, but he's really friendly. We hope to work with both of
them. We think the way that both the father, Efrain, and Darwin will
join the church is just constantly being invited and exposed to the
church. It's going to be a long process, but we're willing to do it!

But yeah...so that was my week!! I figure if I just make my weeks
slowly get better and better, I'm gonna have some of the best weeks of
my life pretty soon! ;) well, I gotta go to transfers!! Me and Elder
Prestwich are staying together for another 6 weeks at least!! :) I
really like the kid. He's a good, kindhearted guy. He's still WAY
different than me. He's SO quiet. He opens up and acts fun and crazy
when were alone or in our apartment but other than that he's pretty
silent. I'm.....not that way :) haha I'm actually really proud of
myself and how I've developed to be able to talk with strangers and
still act like myself and be fun and crazy. I'm still pretty quiet in
large group setting...I'm just not a big group person. I don't think I
ever will be...but maybe! Haha I've gotten pretty close with a lot of
the members because of it. I don't know what it is, but all of the
little girls in the families just love me ;) I was at the Hippens last
night and their little girl Pip was like all over me. She kept putting
her face like super close to mine and telling me jokes and she'd
scoot her chair up close to me and lay her head on my arm every once
in awhile haha...it was soooo adorable :)

I gotta go though! I love you all so much! Keep praying for each
other. You're the best family ever :) and yes, you're ALL family!

Your goofy Elder,
Elder Stafford

The flickin' chicken. Elder Prestwich flicked it up on our cieling about 5 weeks ago and it's just stayed.  We haven't had the heart to take it down...he was hangin' on by a thread!!  We took him down and gave him to Elder Fuller as his parting gift :)

My district!!

Me with Elder Edmunds...my third companion

Me with Elder Fuller who is going home

Me at the Hippens!!  They are such an awesome family!  We had a party at their house yesterday to say goodbye to Elder Fuller and Sister Larson who are both leaving.