Dec 2

from nov 25th letter:

so the only thing that did happen with transfers is that elder williams got transfered out, he is now in downtown sapporo. and the new zone leader here is elder nelson!!!! my old trainer!! now we are going to serve together as zone leaders!!!!(but we have seperate prosolyting companions) im really excited!! its going to be a lot of fun and we are going to work really well together with the members!!!!!!!!!!! we hope to be seeing a lot of white this next transfer!!(and thats not just snow!)

from dec 2 letter:

well having elder nelson back around is very nice!! we are very focused and really plan on some big things this month. i have noticed some big changes recently and they came from the best source, god! i had a good talk with elder kashima i expressed i wanted to work harder, i wanted to do what i did with elder miller, i told him we needed to make a covenant with the lord so that we can see a baptism this month! he was not all the way there with me which was the slight disapointment but i think the reason he was a little off was because he had never done it before. but we did it and after that we got together as 4 (with the other 2 elders in the apartment) and decided what we all needed to do to turn this place around (atsubetsu averages 10 baptisms a year, this year they have 2). we got together, planned some great stuff, and then acted!!! we went and visited the bishop and then elder nelson and i last night met with him. as we were planning we decided we wanted to be bold with him, and tell him to lead by example, after we did. we then decided we would promise him a baptism (even though we dont have anyone who is really close) giving ourselves only 4 weeks to get someone baptized was an action of faith but we commited. we met with the bishop and told him in december there would be a baptism and after that we expect him to see we can work hard and give us referrals. he said "sounds good. i did the same thing on my mission." then the unthinkable happened, he asked me if i remembered the little girl named sawaguchi, i said yes(she is a 9 yr. part member) well her mom said she wants her to get baptized, and she does too. i think she can get baptized very soon, in fact probably in two weeks on the 12th of december. i will call her and see if we can start the lessons this saturday! we were blown away!!! we came out of our meeting with tons of ideas, the bishops full support and best of all a baptismal date!!!!!! we were needless to say extremly grateful and as soon as we left gave a prayer of gratitude to the lord. how powerful we are when we covenant with the lord. we have a lot of things that we promised the lord we would sacrifice and i think the lord knew right away from the intentions of our hearts that we fully planned on keeping up our part and immediately (the next day) we were blessed beyond measure!

the lord is ever so willing to bless our lives, he is just waiting for us to give up ours and put him to the test.
with much love,
elder daniel henry lawler