January 7, 2013

Things have been pretty busy with the holiday season!  We had transfers over Christmas and interviews with President Jergensen this past week.  Me and my companion are staying together for this next transfer... joy! =P!   We got a car for Christmas, so that was awesome! It helps us out a lot even though we have a small area.  Talking to family on Christmas was of coarse great!   This area has been fun so far.  There are some awesome families here and that always helps!   W dropped 2 investigators over the break but have a few referals that we will be working with shortly, so things are still moving along.  But overall the best part about these last few weeks was Sunday December 30th in this the Iowa Des Moines Mission.  For the year of 2012 we had a mission goal of bringing 400 souls to Christ.  We worked diligently throughout the year to try and reach our goal.  We were a ways off where we needed to be in the middle of the year so we started changing a few things and working even harder to invite people to be baptized.  We started setting dates and doing everything we could to reach our goal.  In September we were on track to reaching our goal but we had a lot of work to do. Then in October we only had 16 baptisms for the entire month, seemingly making our goal almost impossible to reach.  President re-committed us and we went out with a new vigor and started relying wholly upon the Lord.  By the end of November we were at 321 people baptized.  That meant we needed to baptize 79 people in the month of December, more than doubling even our highest month of baptisms.  But we did NOT give up!   We worked and worked and by the last week we needed 23 more people to be baptized and we only had 19 people across the mission who even had dates set for the end of the year. ( for those of you who don't know, usually just under half the people with dates actually get baptized)   President sent out a text telling everyone that there were 4 people somewhere in the mission who needed to be baptized in the month of December!   So the mission went to work!   In 2 days we had 27 dates set instead of just 19 and by the night of Sunday December 30th 400 PEOPLE WERE BAPTISED!!!   I know and can testify that the Lord blesses those that strive to accomplish his will!   Miracle after miracle happened in the month of December and I know it was because we did everything we could to do what the Lord wanted us to do, and so he granted unto us the power to bring all of the 400 souls unto the Kingdom of God!   I am and will forever be eternally grateful for the blessing and miracles I witnessed in this mission this past year.  The Lord really does care for and love us each individually and will always be there to help us after we have done all we can do!  I love you all and pray for constantly!

Love Elder Jach-Goates