Happy Birthday Mom!

Hey Mom!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
How old are you now? 29?

President Winegar said that we actually got over 300 referrals from the Gladys Knight Fireside. A few more came in through the mail. I think most of the referrals were members though. Most of the companionships in the Cherry Hill Stake got one or two new investigators from it. I think the most investigators anyone got was 4. We got 4 and I think someone else did too.

Whoa! Dad's the new ......(sorry we can't say yet)! That's Awesome! Maybe he'll find something that you don't know so he can get some candy! I'm sure he'll find something in Isaiah that will just baffle you.

Doris canceled that day. Actually everyone canceled that day because of the rain. It happens. We rescheduled for later. It was raining the past couple of days, but I hear it's supposed to be bright and sunny for the rest of the week.

To get the pictures for the departing slide show, the first week of the transfer I send out a letter explaining the missions policies for pictures. Usually its about 25 pictures representing their mission. I exhort them to send it to me digitally by CD or Email so that they can have good quality pictures in their slide show. Sometimes they send me the prints anyways which have to be scanned individually. Then they tell me what song they want. I then edit all the pictures to make them look better and I cut the song so that it's around 2 1/2 minutes to 3 minutes long. Then I make the slide show for each person so that each slide show is it's own file and then I make the menus for the DVD and arrange everything on how it's supposed to go and then I burn it to a DVD and finish it.

I don't get to make my own departing slide-show. I'll be transferred at the end of April, according to what Pres. said a few weeks ago when I became the lone office Elder. I don't think I'll have a departing fireside because the switch will be made at the end of June. I think that the Philadelphia mission is a lot bigger and spread out so they aren't able to have transfer meetings like we do. I believe that there will only be 2 more departing slide shows before the mission closes. I'll make the one for April, and Elder Howard will take my place and he will make the one for the June Transfer.

Yesterday was Zone Conference. We learned about making our prayers more effective. We studied from the prayer of Mohonri Moriancumer (AKA The brother of Jared) in Ether 3:1-6. There are five main steps:
1. Express your humility.
2. Acknowledge that God has given a commandment that you must follow
3. Sincere action - to show that you've done all that you can
4. Ask from God what you want him to do
5. Reason/counsel with God

I thought that it was pretty good. The other prayers throughout the scriptures use this same pattern. We get to memorize these 5 steps for interviews.

Today we have an appointment with a referral from a member. The Harbards(sp?) are/were catholic until they were recently displeased with the conduct of the Catholic church. They don't have much time to meet with us so we'll have to make it a quick visit(15 min). Pray that they'll be interested in something that we say in that short amount of time.

Well that's it for this week. Hope you have a Happy Birthday!

Love,
Zack