Happy Easter everyone!!! I love Easter, I wish we celebrated it as much in the western world as Christmas. But at the same time, it's a blessing that it's always been more modestly celebrated, as it hasn't gotten quite as commerialized as Christmas. I think in the future I'll try to follow Easter traditions just like I had in my family when I was growing up. That fake-grass stuff my parents always stuck in the baskets full of candy always got on my nerves though, I may have to leave it out :)
We didn't have too much in the way of easter celebrations -- we went to an Easter-themed Family Home Evening with investigators last week, and the sunday program was Easter-themed, but besides that there wasn't much to speak of unfortunately. I did spend plenty of time reflecting on Easter and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I find it very beautiful that angels appeared to others two times in Christ's life to announce "glad tidings" to others: to announce his birth, and to announce his resurrection. After all, gospel litterally means "good news" or "glad tidings".
And here's some more glad tidings: Our mission smashed all previous records, as well as our goal, with a total of 84 baptisms in March!!! Our previous record was in the mid-60s, and our goal was 75. I think now that the mission has picked up the momentum, we'll be able to pick up the pace even more in the future.
As a side note, I here my trainer and his current companion down in EMP baptized someone this past weekend who we taught together while I was there. I don't have any more information or details though, but it's exciting to hear.
It was a fairly short week, and not too much to report. I'm writing on Tuesday, by the way, because Monday was a holiday here in Australia and so all the Libraries were closed, so P-day was moved to tuesday.
In the evening on Saturday, while I was GQing in the city, I was sitting next to a Taiwanese girl on a bench. I hadn't yet started speaking to her, when three other people walked up -- and one of them recognized me! It was an investigator of the other elders, and two other Taiwanese friends. They were all co-workers. Funny things happen while you find, sometimes, little miracles and big ones. Some of the investigators friends should be coming to English class tonight.
The best story of the week was on Sunday. During the last hour of church, the special Easter program, a former investigator from China walked in, with an Australian friend. We talked to them afterwards, and later that night we met again and had one of the most spiritual first lessons I've ever had. We watched the 20-min Restoration film at a member's home and discussed prayer and the Book of Mormon, and the Australian man was definitely willing to give it a try. He said he has never actually involved himself with any religion before -- his personal views are closest (in philosophy) to Buddhism -- but for some reason today decided to give it a shot and come along with his friend, and he was glad he did.
One last thing: now that it's April, the mission president's new big push is to increase the finding this mission does. He wants us to do 14 hours a week of finding (like street contacting or tracting) per companionship. If, as a zone, we hit 14hrs x 4wks x #comps (somewhere in the low 500s), we'll get some kind of reward. One reward discussed was a full-day P-day, I find it funny that the reward is the opposite of the work, haha.
That's all for the week, though. I hope everyone had a good easter! Take care!
Elder J. Colton Ladd
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