Week 88

Brothers and Sisters,

This is start of an email I just got:

Dear Elder Mitchell,

Can you believe it?  We are already preparing for your release on January 4  2019.  Would you please answer the questions below and send them back as soon as possible.

 Thank you so much!

I wasn't expecting this quite so soon. But something cool is that I will have been a missionary for parts of four different calendar years. I entered the MTC on December 28, 2016. That means I was a missionary for all of 2017 and will be for all of 2018 too. Maybe my missionary plaque will say 2016-2019. That would be pretty cool. :)

It being week 88 right now means that the number of opportunities I have to email y'all are becoming fewer and fewer with each week that passes. I don't have a good plan right now, but I hope to have my last several emails be even better than they've been up to this point. That may or may not be very difficult...

Recently our mission president has been telling us to keep talking to people all the way up until our curfew which is 9 pm if we don't have a lesson (rather than studying at the end of the day to spare people coming to their doors late at night) and this week we found the reason for it. Lots of people politely tell us that it's late and we should think about heading home (which wasn't a huge surprise) but this week was a little different. We were knocking on our last door at about 8:40 last Sunday before the 15 minute bike ride home and talked to a really nice guy that has studied Christianity a little bit but doesn't currently practice a religion of his own. He told us that he's not usually home, but if we came back at about the same time the chances would be higher! I don't know if anyone else in the mission has ended up finding anyone like that, but our talk with him turned into a 20 minute lesson about the Book of Mormon and he gladly accepted a copy! It was evidence to me that mission leaders are led by God and receive revelation to help prepared people hear the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

Have a great week!

Elder Mitchell