Dear Everyone,
Thanks for all of your letters again, and if I have time I'll try to reply to all of them individually again like I've been doing the past couple weeks, but I figured I better write a general letter today since Mom was getting on my case that I wasn't writing enough to her as much as I had. :)
Fishing was great last week! I'm pretty sure there was no fish in the pond, but we still had a good time. Sorry that it took so long for me to write this week, but we had our Zone Conference on Monday in Shreveport and our Mission President wanted us to be able to go out and apply the things we learned the day after the Conference so we're having our P-day on Wednesday this week. Next week it should be back to Monday. It seems like our P-day has been changing every week for the last month.
As always, things have been great here in Texarkana. It snowed again on Saturday and then it's been sunny and warm the last couple days. Supposedly it's going to rain tomorrow or Friday, so we'll see what happens. Elder Davis and I are almost completely out of miles for this month so we're spending the remainder of the week on bikes or walking.
First bit of news is that Antonio and Lorretta are getting married this Saturday still. They've been waiting to go get the marriage license until Antonio got payed and today was the last day for them to get the license for the wedding to take place on Saturday (There's a 3 day waiting period). They gave us a call this morning to tell us that they had just gone and filled out all the paperwork so we're pretty excited about that. We're still a little nervous about whether everything will turn out good since they waited until the last minute and since we're the one's that have to try to organize it all in two days, but it's going to happen and that's all that matters. Lorretta said she still wants to be baptized, but she got sick last Sunday and couldn't come to church so we'll have to extend the date again. It's better this way anyway though, because there's still some other problems that we need to work on with her before she can get baptized.
I'm not sure how much I've told you about our investigator Barbara Nixon, but she's another lady that we've been working with. She's a 58-year-old Black woman and has been investigating churches here in Texarkana ever since she moved here 4 years ago. We tracted into her a couple months ago and finally started having lessons with her about 3 weeks ago. She has a lot of different ideas that she's taken from other religions she's studied, but she has great questions and every time we give her an answer, she says how much sense it all makes. She came to church two weeks ago, but didn't come last week because of the snow...as little as it was. She has a ton of potential though and she's one of the people we're focusing on this transfer. She turned down a baptismal date when we taught her the first week because she said she didn't want to jump into anything, but you can tell that the Spirit's really been working with her and we're hoping to have a date with her this week. I think the biggest thing that will hold her back is the Word of Wisdom, (she drinks coffee, tea, and she's been smoking for 46 years) but she said that she was going to try to quit and we're going to help her as much as we can.
One of our spanish investigators, Agustine Martinez, came to church this last Sunday BECAUSE of the bad weather. We've taught him all of the lessons and the only thing keeping him from being baptized is because it's so hard for him to come to church. So many of the Hispanic population here work on Sundays because that's the day that businesses are closed and the construction companies have them go work on roofs or cement. I would love to see Agustine get baptized though. I began teaching him with Elder Wilson and he was the first person that I really felt a connection with as I taught him. Of course I cared for all our other investigators, but he was the first one that I really felt I was meant to come out here and teach.
The day to day things are still going well. At Zone Conference, the Assistants said that they were going to begin a 40 day fast and all those who wanted to join in were welcome to it. (Instead of fasting from food or water, each missionary chooses things that he wants to give up for the next 40 days so that we can focus on the work of the Lord and double the baptisms in our mission which is what our goal has been since the mission conference a couple weeks ago). For instance, one of the ideas that was put forward by the Assistants was to go out and work for an hour on P-day. So that's what we're going to be doing. Elder Davis and I also decided that for the next 40 days, we won't say one word to each other in English unless we're with an investigator. :) Our mission-wide "fast" is starting tomorrow and there's a couple other things that I'm planning on doing as well. Part of our mission conference had focused on Consecration and Sacrifice and it's been on my mind a lot lately, what other things I can do to more fully give myself over to the Lord.
Well, that's all for today. I hope that you're all doing well and I continue to pray for you. I love serving here so much and am just overwhelmed every day how much the Lord has done for me out here as I have tried to serve him. It really is true what it says in Mosiah that no matter how much we try to serve the Lord to pay him back for what he does for us, he immediately blesses us for the service we give. I love you all!
Tu hijo y hermano en Cristo,
Elder Bradley Bishop
