Week 3 in the field!

Hey all!

Elder Ang is gone - he got transferred to Lowell. So I'm officially in a normal companionship, with just me and Elder Wayne. We seem to get a lot more accomplished and we work more efficiently with just the two of us. We are SO busy though, all day, every day. It's pretty crazy. Our area is huge, since we're speaking Cambodian, but we also get all the English work in this area...my goodness. It's crazy.

We found 2 new investigators this week! One of them is the boyfriend of a member, and the other was a referral from Church Headquarters. Both of them have a strong desire to be baptized and learn of the gospel, so it's really exciting!

Last P-day we went to Salem, saw a couple lighthouses and piers, and went to the Salem Witch Museum! It was pretty interesting and informative. It's sad that so many innocent people got killed, but it was really cool to learn about causes and what happened. Elder Swasey had an interesting thought though - it could very well have been real. Not the witches, but the influence of Satan in that time. Think about it...America was founded for religious freedom, as part of what paved the way for the Restoration to take place. Why wouldn't Satan be fighting against that in any way he could? His influence could very well have been over the minds of the people and those young girls who accused so many. He could very well place fear in their hearts and cause a hysteria that could potentially destroy a society, but we know that truth and light will always win out in the end. I'm not saying that's what happened, but it makes sense!

The Sen family (the only active Cambodian family in our ward) has us over for dinner every Friday night, and this last Friday, the mother/grandmother asked us for a blessing. Elder Wayne delegated the sealing portion of the blessing to me, which I had only ever done once before. It was nerve-wracking, but also a wonderful experience to build my faith and testimony of the power of the priesthood.

One of the members of the ward fed us Hawaiian Haystacks the other night - it made me SO unbelievably happy!!! Mom would always make that when we had the missionaries over for dinner, and now I'm the missionary being fed it! I'll admit it, I took a picture with my food. =]

Cotter got baptized on Sunday (yesterday)!!! It was a really cool experience, and I'm thankful for the successes that our Heavenly Father has given us. It's crazy - I've been out here for only 3 weeks and we already had a baptism! I feel so blessed. Oh, did I mention that Cotter asked ME to baptize him?! Yeah. So not only did we have a baptism within 3 weeks of me getting here, but I was the one that baptized him. It was an amazing feeling! Baptism is the gate that we all must enter through, and it's incredible to know that I helped someone through that gate!

The MTC feels like an entirely different world now. I'm so grateful for all that I'm learning and all that our Heavenly Father is blessing me with.

Much love to you all!

Elder DeLong