4/12/10

Dear Everyone,

Sounds like there's some major changes happening with everyone in the family back home. Everything will work out though in the end and I'll continue to pray for you. Tell Grandma Bishop congratulations on turning 93 for me. When I told the other missionaries that my grandma was 93 today, Elder Davis said that my parents must be in there 60's for my grandma to be that old. You two haven't been jumping a few birthdays while I've been away have you? :) Thanks for the package Mom. The bread was great, but the box you sent it in was a little interesting. You mentioned Aunt Shirley missing my emails in your letter. If you could send me her address, then I can include her in my emails instead of you having to forward it on to her every time and risk forgetting about it.

Well, the work here is still progressing. We met a lot of great new people this last week and some had already previously listened to the missionaries in other places in the U.S. and they wanted us to come back and start teaching them again so we're pretty excited for that. Also, I don't know if I told you in my letter home last week, but the Arkansas Elders that we share an apartment with had a double baptism on Friday, a woman and her ten-year-old son. It was a great baptism and we were all very excited for her. She teaches at one of the high schools here in Texarkana and had to endure a lot of persecution from her fellow teachers when she made the decision to be baptized. It was the first baptism that this area has seen in over 9 months as well so the ward was pretty excited.

Just so you know, transfers are happening next week and there's a good chance that I'll be getting moved to a new area. President asked both Elder Knight (who was brought up here to Texarkana the same time as me) and I in our interviews if our companions were ready to take over the areas. He said nothing is sure yet because he still needs to pray about it, but again, there's a pretty good chance of it happening. Obviously, I'll go wherever the Lord needs me, but it's going to be pretty hard to leave this area if I do end up being transferred. I've come to love the people, both the members and investigators, in this area so much and it'll be hard to say goodbye. There's also so many people here that we've been teaching for a long time as well as some that we've met only recently, that are progressing towards baptism. We found a couple this week who just got married a couple days before we knocked there door who were very interested in The Book of Mormon and the Gospel. One of the long term Spanish investigators who we hadn't visited for a while because he was so hard to contact suddenly decided that he wanted to be baptized and told a member he wanted to set up a time for us to come over and start teaching him again. It seems like there are so many things happening here right when I'm about to leave, but I guess that will happen in every area that I'm leaving. Anyway, if I do end up getting transferred, I probably won't be able to write you next week so don't get worried if you don't receive a letter until two weeks from now. (That's for you Mom) I'll try to get a regular letter off to you, but I don't know if I'll be given time for that either so I guess I'll talk to you in two weeks if that is the case.

I love you all and hope everything is going great.

Tu hijo y hermano en Cristo,

Elder Bradley Bishop