The 13th Week in South Carolina

Portions of Elder Benjamin Walker's most recent letter:

I'll tell you one of the many many things that have happened on my mission. (I'm really not very good at writing them down, I'm bound to forget all of them except this one because I've typed it up.) Last Thursday we were tracking a couple of neighborhoods and 3 out of 5 people we talked to was interested enough to make a return appointment with us to teach them more at a better time. (A very successful tracting period of time.) Well, one of the houses we knocked at, we were speaking with the husband about the church. Somewhere in the conversation we brought up mormon.org and his wife (who we found out was having her 4th baby the following day) yelled from the midst of the house "I'm pulling it up right now!" (Yes, she was eavesdropping on our conversation.) Anyway, to make a longer story shorter, right before the door shut as we were leaving she exclaimed to her husband excitedly, "We're going to be Mormon!" Can you imagine what joy it brought us as missionaries to hear her say that? a lot... We haven't reached the return appointment date yet, I think it's tomorrow or Wed, because of her recovery of bearing another child probably. What awesome people there are out there in the world ready to hear the gospel! Just this morning members called us and asked us to teach their friends the gospel over dinner... Investigator! Unfortunately, they aren't in our ward boundaries so the Oakbrook missionaries will get to baptize them into the Oakbrook ward and probably teach them most of the gospel too, even though the fellowshippers are in our ward, unless conflicts arise and the bishops of both wards say otherwise. 

Elder Parker, my companion, has put out a focus on contacting all of the members in the ward, active or not. I think I have gotten to know the ward a lot better, even though I already know them pretty well. 

I've gone on several exchanges (exchange = swap companions for a day) in the last few months. It's been fun to go into new areas and meet different people. One of the things that Elder Parker did is collapse the boundaries between the missionaries in the Summerville ward. Now the whole ward boundaries are free-for-all amongst us 4 missionaries. Haven't run into a problem yet. I think it's better this way anyway; it seems to be more effective.

His study journal, which he had first brought up on January 23, 2012, he mentioned again, saying:

I have discovered that my method of how I keep my study journal (binder) works really well. I hope I have it stuffed full of insights and other things by the time I get home. I bought the largest and sturdiest binder they had to sell.

I've asked him on how exactly he keeps a study journal, so when he writes me back I'm sure to have the information that I can put up here to inform each of us how to create such a useful tool.