Now things are getting serious!

This transfer came as a HUGE surprise to us last week. Our endless debates with the mission president has finally paid off and the areas in the ASL program here in Los Angeles has been divided and rearranged. As of this point forward, Los Angeles now has SIX missionaries in THREE companionships in THREE areas (ASL South, ASL East and ASL West). We're really excited about this because the ASL program is no longer weak anymore. It has became strong once again and is growing. We hope that in the near future, Salt Lake City can send some more missionaries over to Los Angeles and we can focus on adding ASL North into the mix. Right now, finding more people to teach is our main priority.

Oh, and we want an official ASL District. We just need a District Leader of our own. Hopefully that'll happen next transfer or so. Elder Franson, our current District Leader, is good, but an ASL District Leader is better, at least for us. Maybe we can talk the president into dragging back Elder Cordy, who was our DL before.


In other news, Vitaliy FINALLY got baptized last sunday! The whole week, we ran around like rats getting everything ready for his baptism and we prayed a lot, but everything went smoothly... almost. Vitaliy asked me to baptize him. I was so nervous (plus they turned on the wrong faucet and the baptismal water was FREEZING) I fumbled on the first try and had to do it all over. WHOOPS. But the good thing is that Vitaliy felt the spirit strongly and talked about it all the way home. Cool. I bet he's going to be excited to get the holy ghost next sunday. Vitaliy is an awesome guy and I hope he stays strong from now on!

Well, that's baptism #6.

Anyhoo, right now, Elder Franco and I are getting used to our new area. we plan to get a large-scale map and some tacks soon so we can pinpoint all of our deaf people we're working together. As you can see, this transfer was a HUGE change. In fact, they don't even have another apartment ready yet so 4 of our missionaries had to share one apartment. I must imagine it'd be really cramped having only one bedroom and only one bathroom for everyone to share, plus dish washing and laundry would be a nightmare, let alone the daily morning schedule. Luckily, Elder Franco and I don't have to go through that.

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-E.T. {0 ^ 0} __o
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