July 29,2013 Bikes!

Dear Mom Dad Chris Mason and Anna,

This week was pretty sweet. Some good news: We got bikes on Wednesday.  Bikes are the greatest invention ever. They are about 400% more efficient than walking which makes the travel time so much better. On the bike the wind is in my face which keeps me super cooled down, but then as soon as I stop to go to someone’s house I just start sweating like crazy. It's great though because then the members think we're working super hard.  Bad news:  Idaho has these thorn things called "goat’s heads."  The day after we got bikes, we were like 5 miles from our next appointment that started in 25 minutes, and I ran over seriously like a 100 goat’s heads and both my tires popped. We tied our bike to a telephone pole and just started booking it on foot.  We were just a little late because an old man offered us a ride.  That's one of the perks of serving in Idaho. People offer us rides all over town! We're getting the tubes replaced today though, so we should be mobile tomorrow!

We had a lesson with our first investigator on Tuesday.  He's getting baptized on the 24th of August. This is how it went, "Will you be baptized?", "Yes." "Next month?" "Yes!” ”On the 24th?" "YES!"  He was so excited!  Honestly, we could have asked him to be baptized that day in the apartments' pool and he would have said yes.  Apparently not every investigator is like that though, so I guess we just got lucky ha-ha.  We won't be teaching him the rest of the lessons or be doing the baptism because he's actually 32 years old so not a YSA anymore.

We are teaching a lot still.  Most of the lessons are to members though.  It's hard to find investigators right now especially since we work in the student wards that have weekly sacrament attendance of about 45 because most of the students are at home over the summer.  Once school starts though, that number should go up to about 145 and hopefully we get a lot of referrals with the new people!  We had a sweet experience on Saturday.  We had a lesson set up with a girl who we thought was just a less active member, but when we met with her she told us she was never baptized and wanted to learn more about the church!  So sick!  She is our only investigator right now, so hopefully things go well.

I love you guys!

Elder Marsh