Year 1, Week 39: Spanish Branch?

This week has been great so far! One of the coolest things that happened was this Sunday. First, some background. Elder Neeley and I were thinking that if we keep the Waterbury Spanish group the way it is going, it will never grow into a branch. We started thinking of what could be an immediate change to that. Our idea was to combine the Southington(next town over) and the Waterbury Group in two and make it a branch. We then heard that President Miller has been meeting with our Stake President, President Martin. We called up President Miller and asked him what happened in there meeting and he just said they were talking about Missionaries in another part of the Zone. Anyway, Elder Neeley left and Elder Porritt came but I've still been thinking about this idea.

Yesterday, Sunday, we had Ward Conference with the Leaders of the Stake present. At the end, the Stake Presidency wanted to have a Spanish meeting. In the meeting they said that their plans are to make us a Spanish Branch in the year of 2018. We will be combining with the Southington Group when that happens. I won't be here for it, but I'm hoping to come back to Waterbury in 2019 and serve here in a branch. Also, kinda cool that my plans fell right in with the Stakes plans! Haha! The members were told that they need to bring the Less Active members back or we won't have enough people to do it. Elder Porritt and I have several people we are working with who have potential to come back.

While tracting, we met a young family named J. and M. (most generic Hispanic names ever). We talked to them a bunch about the Restoration but M. believes that Angels wrote the Bible and we weren't sure how to tell her that men wrote it under the direction from God and then it was changed. We had already been in there for about 45 minutes and didn't have the time to work over all of that. We are hopefully going back this Thursday. They were super nice and could have real potential!

The English Elders have 5 baptismal dates for the month of May. 4 of them used to be our investigators who we then passed of to them. It's pretty cool that even though our numbers are crazy, we still play a major role in the progress of others. I used to feel that if my numbers for the week or month didn't increase I was "failing in missionary work". Not true!

Another day, we were knocking doors and a girl named K. answered. She didn't have time at the moment but gave us her Facebook and said we could contact her and come back. Even though we've had the Technology for about a month, this was the first time I've ever actually used Facebook while proselyting. It was pretty cool. We'll see if she turns out to be anything. 

There is a lady named S. who is a less active. When I was serving with Elder Tirado she would always call and insult us half the time for not making time to talk with her. I talked to President Miller about her. He said to send her home teachers. Yesterday, she left a message for us that she had a friend who is interested in the Gospel and she needs us to teach her. So after 3 months of not answering we finally called her. She was actually super nice and kind. So maybe the 3 months made her do some thinking;) haha!

Not much else happened this week! I will be sending audio as well! Love ya

Elder Bushman