Letter 5/23/11 (sorry I've been slacking)

Hey Everybody!
It has been another week of ups and downs! Our mission is doing great! We set a goal to get 28 baptisms before the beginning of July when Pres. Hill goes home and we are on our way! We already have had 11 baptisms since January and have 11 baptismal dates as of right now and about 4 of those happened in the past week!...I don't know the exact numbers but we are doing well! There is a baptismal date in Serbia and I heard it is the first one in about a year! Pretty amazing! The Lord is moving the work along in the Slovenia/Croatia mission!

We had our sign up night for English class and had TONS of women show up! 42 in all and about 8 men. 50 people for English class. That's not bad! We are doing personal classes so we had to double some people up or we would have had absolutely no time for food or investigator and member lessons. It's going to be a crazy 4-6 weeks but i am really excited! As it is we still don't have a ton of time for either. We are hoping that those who aren't interested in the gospel will drop themselves so we will be able to focus more on those who show potential. Bomo videli!

Speaking of investigators we actually tried having a lesson with Brita and Ksenija...We had an interesting experience with them this week and it was a little disheartening. We went to have a lesson with them and their father came home. As soon as he opened the door they hid their books of mormon and told us to pretend we were working on English. Sister Oakley and I were confused and didn't quite know what to do. Apparently the dad knows they are going to church but not that they are thinking of joining it. We did have a good discussion about missionary work though once we were introduced and started talking. We are hoping it was a good opportunity to open the door for Ksenija and Brita. They didn't come to church yesterday either so that also makes us a little nervous. We called and we have a lesson on for today so we are praying that it goes well and we can really encourage them to talk to their dad about the church and pray for help.

I had a really neat experience with prayer this week. I have always known the purpose of prayer and that it is our opportunity to talk to our Heavenly Father but this week Heavenly Father has become more real to me and it has been a neat experience to realize on a deeper level that prayer is more than just a formality but an actual conversation we can have with our Father in Heaven. I know that this will help me as I receive more personal revelation and revelation regarding missionary work. This gospel is an amazing thing!

We also had the opportunity to go to a Catholic Youth Activity. We met some young Catholic missionaries and it was neat to see their faith and relationship with God. They all had neat experiences of how they came to know God and their purpose in life. It is so good to see others who have firm faith in God!
I think thats about as much as I have time for this week!
Thank you for all the prayers and support!
Love,
Sestra Powell