Meeting people by the Potomac River

Hello!

We have had a pretty good week here. We were able to talk to some
interesting people, as well as explore some places we had never been.

Monday we ended up walking down King street which is the main road
that goes through old town Alexandria. We went to an art museum there
by the Potomac river. The museum used to be a torpedo factory back in
world war 2. There is quite a bit of history here and it is cool to
see all of the old stuff.

On Tuesday we had zone conference. So we spent from 8:30 am till 4 pm
in a meeting. I think that is my least favorite meeting that we go to.
It's way to long and I always end up with a headache. We had to go a
little early because our ride had to have a car inspection so we
decided before the meeting to go get some McDonald's. We were
definitely glad that we did. Even though it was long it turned out to
be really good. We learned a lot about how to address people's
concerns by first teaching faith in Christ. It is vital for people to
have that faith before we try to answer their questions because if
they don't have faith in the first place then it doesn't do them any
good. We also learned a lot about temple work and how we need to get
our recent converts to the temple. Retention rate drops significantly
if they don't go to the temple within the first 6 months.

I don't think I ever told you guys this but I had the opportunity to
speak in sacrament meeting last week. I spoke on having non members
come into the homes of the members. Luckily I only had to speak for
about 10 minutes so it wasn't too bad. We ended up have a youth
speaker, Elder Cook and I, and then our ward mission leader. Way to
many speakers for 1 meeting. We went till about 12:25....only a few
minutes over.

We were able to meet with our progressing investigator this week. We
talked about tithing and the word of wisdom. He is engaged to a less
active member, and they are making progress in coming onto the church.
He is on board with being baptized, but they live together right now
and aren't going to get married until June. He also works every other
Sunday so it makes it hard for us to see his true commitment. I guess
we will see how it goes.

Yesterday we had a regional broadcast from Salt Lake City. It was to
something like 130 stakes on the east coast. It was pretty good. We
heard from Sister Reeves, as well as Elder Hales, and Elder Anderson.
We also have regular stake conference this week. We just have all
sorts of fun meetings these two weeks.

We walked down by the Potomac river yesterday. We didn't know really
where we were going just hoping to see some people to talk to. We met
this couple that we ended up talking to for about 45 minutes in the
bank of the river. We talked about what we do as missionaries, what we
want to do in life, pretty much anything that you could think of we at
least talked a little about it. It was good to just have a normal
conversation with someone. Ultimately that shows them that we are
normal people and hopefully it will lead to further interest in the
future. We talked to a guy named Cornelius as well this week. He says
that he loves Mormons and every time he sees us he wants to talk. He
is a black guy that we first met in Mcdonalds a few weeks ago. Every
time we talk to him we can smell alcohol on him. He is a cool guy and
we like talking to him. Every time he shows us his scar on his chest
from when he got shot in New York. We meet a lot of interesting people
here. But it's fun.

that is our week in a nutshell. Glad to hear everything is going good
with you guys.

Love you!