it was the best of times, it was the worst of times

in case any one is wondering, the title is actually a line from a book written by moby dickens. he writes really good, and well too. but i guess that line describes a little about how my week has been. monday through friday were pretty challenging. not for any reason specific. i think the main problem was is that the elder that was here before me was about to leave for his house, so they werent really working to find investigators that much. so now that im here we have (had) no investigators. every day we would go out and talk to as many people as we could, and mostly we visited members to see if they knew any one we could teach, but we couldnt find any one. almost the whole week we went without teaching one lesson to an investigator. on top of that i left the area of few times to go to the areas of other missionaries in my district (there is 3 companionship's in my district). its kind of tough because i have to keep track of all the investigators in my area (which are none) and in the other areas as well. so it was a little difficult to get my bearings. and we are coming up to the end of the month. but i learned a great lesson about faith and patients. i was looking in the book of mormon when i came upon mosia 24. it talked about the people of alma when they get put into bondage by the lamanites, when they were doing nothing wrong. but i really liked a verse towards the end of the chapter that says that they supported all their afflictions until they got to a point when their faith and patients was so great that the voice of the lord came to them saying that they would be freed from bondage the next day. after i read that i decided that i wasnt going to stress alot about not having investigators or any of the challenges. i decided to trust heavenly Father and have patients, knowing that if i did my part, He would do his.
so we kept working hard, and things definitely worked out. 2 cool things happened. the first was when we went to our ward mission leaders house. we told him that we wanted to do a mission correlation meeting. he seemed excited, and he told us about how before the ward used to always do all of the meetings, such as ward council and executive committee. but he told us that lately all of the leaders of the ward have been kind of lazy, and havent been doing really anything. and as a result, the wards success has been dropping lately. we talked about the problem and decided that if we wanted to get any work done here we would have to get the members to get to work. i think i always took for granted how much work really goes in to keeping a ward running. so any way, between the three of us we made a plan to get the members, especially the leadership working in our ward. I think we are really going to make a big difference here.
the other cool thing was on sunday. the bishop pulled us out of sunday school and said he needed to talk to us. he took us into a room and sat us down with a young man that had about 15 years. he then explained that the joven has been coming to church for about a month and he isnt a member, then left us alone. so we taught him about the gospel of Jesus Christ and invited him to be baptized and he accepted. ive realized that one of my specialties here in the mission is that when im not having any success whatsoever Heavenly Father sends us someone that is prepared for the gospel. today we are going to talk to his family and make all of the arrangements for the baptism. how awesome.
well im getting along great with my new old companion. ha hes super funny and we pass most of the day laughing. i like being with him because he has developed the ability of listening to ideas of others, while still putting in his input. so basically i never feel like he is trying to control me, but at the same time i dont feel like i have to do everything.
so like i said, im happy. things are good here. the future looks bright and we are working with alot of animo. but i gotta go. have a great week. work with all the strength you have. here is a quote i wrote to get you through the week. ¨If the whole world doubts, criticizes, mocks and hates you, trust yourself and work with confidence. Then you will almost be on the same level as Leonel Messi¨ ha i love you all.
Elder Jacobson