Letters from Elder Tab: We went HAM again!

What a way to start out my week.........4 emails from Tab and 22 pictures. That equals ONE HAPPY MOM!! All I can say is he's the BEST!

Hi Mom,

I have to be short again this week - I got a lot of random emails and I read them all which took a bit of time! Sorry about that.

So I got both of your packages and they were great! Basically everything I ever wanted. The pants both fit well, too. I am wearing the grey ones right now. They are nice. Thank you!

So this week things were way different. We found 12 new investigators! It was pretty crazy. In actuality, we found like 20 but in the lessons we had with a few of them, we determined which people would be the best use of our time. We went HAM though. We hit the standards of excellence in every area except for member present lessons, which is somewhat tough in our area. It was a great week!

We also met another random unknown move-in member named Junior in a street contact. We began talking to him and he told us how his parents were on a mission in South America and he has been a member all his life. He moved to East Orange because he got a college basketball scholarship in Bloomfield. He seemed like a good guy, but the slide of inactivity had left him out of church for nearly 3 years. He had a testimony! It is so stange how we meet people like Junior all the time! It makes me wonder how many people around us, who we pass by and wave to every day, are unrecorded members of the church in that area. At the beginning of my mission, and even before I left, I was confused as to why the branch presideny made transferring records such a big deal when members moved to another area. I just figured the member would know how to contact the church in their new area. But Satan is sly like that... "I can just miss this Sunday" or, "I'll go next Sunday", etc. and so on until they are fully inactivite. If records were transferred quickly, this would happen a lot less often. Plus it would save us, missionaries, a whole lot of time. We spend lots of time hunting down less actives who moved years ago and never had their records moved from this branch to the next.

Nothing special to report this week, just a lot of hard work and a lot of success! We have several people with baptismal dates now that we found through our own efforts. However, I think we need to take the advice of our mission president, and Dad, and start working more with our members. I've seen that the recent converts with friends in the church stay, and the recent converts without friendship in the church usually don't last long. It's sad to say, but it is true. To me it is similar to building a spider web. It's easier to build on what you already have than to build around something new.

To Caitlin and Regan: Happy Birthday! I wish I could do more for you, but know that I do love you very much. I miss you, too. I hope that things are well for you. Stay strong in the faith!

And to the rest of the family, I love you! I miss you but I'm doing great. Give Indie a bark for me.

Love,

Tab

moor photos.........

In answer to why I attached a photo of doorbells... Basically every house we go to has a million doorbells and it drives me nuts because none are labeled. So you have to guess who belongs to what one.