Missionary Monday - Week 6 in Indianopolis

Good morning,

Well I don't really have anything nice to say so I'm not sure I should say anything at all... but I will because I will get a bunch of frenzied emails next week if I don't write. 

We found out that both Elder Figueiredo and I are going to be transferred and they are going to put sisters here. This area baptized 4 people last year (none of which are active) and we baptized 4 in one month all over the age of 25, 3 of them being males. So what do they do? They white wash it. I would be lying if I said I have faith that it was an "inspired" decision, but I guess we will just have to see.

They decided to enforce the no backpacks rule. So I had to buy what I so lovingly call a man purse (side bag, satchel type of thing). Not a fan. The first day it ruined one of my ties because of the strap that goes across your chest.

For this last week and this next week we have to stay in the chapel between 2 and 4:30 because of the heat and do "practices". That sounds great and all but, we have to go to the chapel in another area to be with the rest of the district, wasting about an hour in transit and money that we don't have for the onibus. The other thing is that the practices they want us to do are ridiculous. Something that happens quite a bit in this mission is that investigators keep commitments and go to church two times, but then get to the day of their baptism and don't want to go through with it because they don't feel ready. So they want us to practice for when this happens so that we can help them get over their "mental block" a.k.a. convince them to just be baptized. I have a problem with that. I don't think you should ever run into that situation. If someone keeps commitments, but doesn't have a testimony, or doesn't feel anything, you taught lessons and not people. That never happened in Michigan. It did happen to some of the people we baptized in Noronha (no one that I personally baptized) and guess how many of them stayed active after they got over their "mental block" and got baptized? ZERO

So hopefully I can find some hope in this next area because I'm running a little low.

Elder Beck