1.6.10

Family,

Hey I had an amazing week and the baptism on Sat was definitely the highlight. We had about 25 non-members at church on Sunday, 10 of which were our investigators! That is definitely the best I've ever done with people at church. Our ward is super missionary focused and as a fruit of that our bishop has a goal of 50 baptisms this year. Last year they had 12. He plans on calling 20 ward missionaries to get it done. That is super crazy! The ward mission leader tried to talk him down a little by which he replied, "Brother, where is your faith?" I love it!

We are finally starting to have to success I've dreamed about my whole life. For the end of this month we have 6 solid more people to be baptized! I have made a goal to be able to baptize 10 more before I go home, but if all goes as plan I might have to adjust that goal. In order to actually get those people baptized I know that I will have to do everything I can and exercise more than a mustard seed of faith. I know it can be done I just have to pray and have the faith that Heavenly Father will protect them.

We had multi-zone conference yesterday at which Elder Swan and I gave a training to our zone. The first presidency's focus is to get all of the missionaries able to have 10 contacts and teach 20 lessons a week. So our training was on how to build an area to be able to achieve the 20 lessons a week. I feel it went fairly well and hopefully we were able to help them. We will be following up with the training at our DLDM this Friday to further help the missionaries.

So we found this super cool family last week who came to church last week. Luisa and her two kids Bryant-10 and Brianna-6. There is also a husband but he works like crazy and is never home. They loved church and felt the spirit strongly both there and while reading the BoM. The kids are both in a Catholic school but yesterday Bryant said, "I have decided that I want to be baptized" lol it was great. After church he also said, "Hey mom, did you know I can be a missionary when I'm 19?" They are a super cool family and I hope everything goes well for them.
Dora and Darius who was suppose to be baptized last month finally came back from their vacation and with a new, stronger determination to get baptized. Dora told us a really cool story on how she was able to quit coffee. It is really hard with Darius because of his ADD but we are doing all that we can to help him and his mom.

Teddy is also doing really well and has improved so much. He has quit drinking tea, just like that and he also has made a lot of progress with his gambling problem. The church has changed him so much and I can visually see the difference the gospel is making in his life.

So the work is going well as usual and all is well here on the battle field of the Lord's work. None of this is easy and I sometimes feel like there are more challenges than success stories, but all is well. I am going to be making some goals for the last six months of my mission to insure that I sprint to the end. I don't want to be comfortable with where I am at and who I am. I must focus on what I can become.
I love you all and hope everyone is ok. Don't worry about not being able to send me an e-mail. Life is really great for me here on the mission field but I feel it is moving to fast for me. I still have a lot I need to do. Thank you for all of your support and all that you have done for me.

Elder Sorensen

PS Thank you all who sent me Christmas packages! I am sorry I can't write to you all personally but know that I deeply appreciate the love you have shown toward me. I have enough candy to kill a person but I really enjoyed hearing from each one of you.

PPS attached is a few pictures from the baptism. This is Nestle and his amazing family who was baptized a few months ago. The kids sung a song, gave one of the talks and one of the prayers, it was pretty sweet. We also had a ton of investigators there who loved the baptism.