Letter 1-7-10

Dear Family,

Seven days of 2010 has come and gone. It has been a good week. I think though that having my calendar opened to January of 2010 has been the biggest insult of my mission. Stupid calendar. I think the calendar has tried to make up for it, though, because it is a flower calendar that I collected when I bought some Pero at a health foods store for Joe Sanchez as a substitute for his coffee. They offered the calendar to me for no charge, so I took it. I think the quote on it in January’s calendar teaches false doctrine. It says that flowers are the sweetest things that God created and forgot to put a soul into. I think flowers do have souls, but maybe I’m wrong. It does say in the Book of Moses that everything that God created was created spiritually before it was created physically. Not like it’s that important anyway. I don’t think Henry Beecher (the author of the quote) had the Book of Moses right off hand, so you can’t really blame him. Anyways, the idea that I am in the last full month of my mission has bothered me and caused the new year to start off a little weird in my mind, but at the same time I am way excited for this new year because the missionary work in 2010 is just going to catch fire in this mission. That is evidenced in what the mission goals are for 2010 throughout the mission. President Robison set a goal for us to triple baptize this year. 60 in one month. That will be remarkable. Elder M Russell Ballard told President Robison that you can get 40 and maybe even 50 without the help of the members, but you won’t hit 60 or beyond without the help of the members, so that is our focus. The members are the means. That is not just what our mission president has said, that is the direction the prophet and the quorum of the twelve want us to take and it has been evidenced in conference. I think there has been at least one general authority in the last several conferences that have talked about member missionary work and several recent talks devoted solely to member missionary work. Take Elder Perry’s talk in May 2009 as an example. Elder Perry is the current head of the missionary organization, so what he said then is huge. Back on terms of goals, our stake president here in Roswell set a goal for 210 convert baptisms in 2010 for the Roswell Stake and the Roswell 1st Ward set a goal for 24 convert baptisms. Take into perspective that the numbers for 2009 for the stake 114 convert baptism and 11 for the ward. Everyone has very high expectation for this year and everyone’s attitudes are in the right place. It is way exciting. I am planning on contributing all I can in the very short amount of time I will be here. If I am allowed to stay in Roswell this next transfer I see an honest potential for 5 or 6 people to get baptized here in this ward in the next two months. Statistically, having everyone get baptized that you think will get baptized doesn’t always happen, but we at least need to get a minimum of 4, because to hit the goal for this ward of 24 in the year, we need 2 a month. I don’t have time to give details about people, I’ll do that next week, but if you want to pray for some people, here are some names of specific people that have the potential to get baptized: Joe Sanchez, Peter Hardin, Jake Gonzales, Chuck and Sharon Nelson, and Sara Fink. I do have to get going, but I will give some details later, probably next week, about these people. Till then, peace out!

Elder Adam R Droge
The DrogeMiester