Transfer Council?

This upcoming transfer is going to be so crazy and hectic. I am so excited I only have to be a small part of it. I have been asked to help the Assistants in preparing transfers... A.K.A all the paper work. So I will be getting a sneak peak one more time and then I'm almost positive all my Assistant privileges will be revoked. We will also be helping with departing missionaries again on Monday and then transfers next Tuesday. I'm excited to completely have the Assistant burden lifted off my shoulders. I am so close I can taste it! The New Assistants have done great at transitioning. I only had to help them full time the first week. The second week I just had a lot of phone calls.

This past week was good. We challenged Jennifer Johnson to baptism for July 30th. She is an awesome lady who is 71 years old! She is wonderful and we now call her grandma Johnson when we visit her. She loves it. We love teaching her and when we taught the first couple lessons she never felt so much power in her heart. She loves the concept that we are all literally brothers and sisters and that she has a ward family anywhere she goes in the world. We are making great progress there. Our other investigators are progressing well. One of them is on-date this weekend but she may be pushed back to next week because of scheduling conflicts. Hopefully that doesn't happen though. I am focusing a lot of my prayers on Brianna and know that this is what she needs. She is 17 years old, soon to be 18 and loves how she feels at church. She is already in the ward choir. I'm not too worried.

As far as the Bellevue stake we had a goal of 7 baptized in June and we only had 6. We have 5 people on-date for baptism in July and our zone goal is 6 baptisms. This week is a make or break week. We have one Spanish couple in the Spanish branch that just need their marriage license. They were supposed to get it 3 weeks ago but when they went in to obtain it she realized her name was spelled wrong on her license. Therefore, she had to get a new drivers license and had to restart the marriage license process. What a burden. Luckily we have a wonderful missionary who is going home next week who really, really wants to baptize them before he heads home. Pray for Angela and Marco! We need all the prayers we can get. Also pray for this:

A) Two baptisms in the Bellevue 1st ward in July and 12 baptisms for the year.

B) One baptism in the YSA ward in the month of July and 12 baptisms for the year.

C) Six baptisms for the Bellevue Stake/Zone.

D) Pray for these names: Angela, Marco, Brianna, pray that they can be baptized on their baptismal dates.

E) Pray for my personal goal of 9 more baptisms before my mission is over.

I would very much appreciate your prayers and I will be following up with all of you next week to make sure you did it! Lets be united and I know we can accomplish anything. I love you all and thank you for participating.

Love,

Elder Bottema