July 25, 2011

Hei Hei Familie,
How is everyone doing? Louisiana is so crazy i love it. I'm just right outside New Orleans and a lot of the people are still not back to normal after Katrina. My address is 733 Carrollwood Village Dr. #69 Gretna, LA 70056. I can't believe I'm in Louisiana right now. It is so hot!!!! and HUMID!!!! and I'm on a bike ha ha. The missionaries that were here before us did NOTHING! We are basically opening up this area. They had no progressive investigators or anything going for them. It's to bad they were just wasting their time out here. Anyways the first day (Wed) in Gretna we got settled into our apartment and went out contacting. We didn't have any luck and taught zero lessons. The next day (Thurs) we taught zero lessons and didn't get any new investigators. I didn't understand why we weren't having any success when we were trying so hard. Elder Cooper and I just kept doing our best trying to find people to teach the gospel to. Friday came along and we finally got a lesson but we didn't get any new investigators. It was hard opening up a new area starting from scratch. I realized that God wanted me to learn something from this. We continued to work hard and Saturday rolled around. I don't what happened but people were coming up to us asking about the gospel. It was amazing, we taught 4 lessons, 2 new investigators, tons of potential investigators and one of the new investigators we taught has a baptismal date now. I couldn't believe how much the Lord blessed us that day. Things are starting to happen I could see several baptisms coming in August.

We taught a lesson to Stefan on Saturday who lives near our apartments. The missionaries had been teaching him but they dropped him a few weeks ago. Elder Cooper and both got a feeling that we should go see him so we did. We found out that he's living with his girlfriend, has several kids and hes been working to get his CPA. He smokes and drinks so we have a lot of work but i guess he wasn't progressing with the other missionaries. The missionaries had taught him most of the lessons and he has read a lot from the B o M. He told me he needs a sign from God that this is the true church and once that happens he is going to get baptized do everything he needs to do to become a Mormon. As we were teaching him the spirit directed me to say, "Stefan do you feel like us coming back over to your apartment is a sign that this is the true church?" He had to think about this one and said, "That is a very good question, I'm going to pray about that one." I think if we continue to teach him he will get baptized in the next month. About 75-85% of the people i talk to are black which is way awesome. They are a lot nicer then white people for some reason ha.

Elder Cooper and I rode our bikes the other day close to the bridges that goes across the Mississippi river to drop off a DVD from headquarter referral. This part of town is really poor and as Elder Cooper and I were walking up the stairs to go up to this apartment this little black kid came up to me and gave me a high five. He was probably only about five years old. He was so cool and i gave him a picture of Jesus Christ with little kids around Him. He loved it and was running all over the place with it. His sister would take the picture and then he would run up to me again and ask for a picture of Jesus. I probably gave him like five pictures.

It pretty much rains everyday here which makes it even more humid when you are riding on your bikes but yesterday (Sunday) was crazy. It poured rain and the thunder was so loud. New Orleans is basically built on swamp land and it floods so easy. I wish i would have brought my camera with me when we driving home from church. We were driving in a river with waves coming off the side of the car that was hitting peoples houses. I had never seen anything like it. They had to close a bunch of streets down to drain them. They have these huge canals where ever you go for draining. The graves at the cemeteries are above ground.

I rode my bike pass Mel Ott park yesterday so that was pretty cool. I couldn't believe what happened to Norway i was eating pizza at this place and it was all over CNN. I wonder if that will delay me any more. I have to go but i hope everything is going great. Louisiana is unlike any other place but it's awesome. I met Bro McKay yesterday at church because they had ward conference so he came to our church. Love you all and I'll talk to you soon!

Eldste Godfrey