Elder James: Enter the Ninja Slayer!

That's right! I'll be staying with Elder James for round two!  The final round... We're super excited to work incredibly hard here in Ventura and I'm going to be working like a maniac for the last seven weeks.  The mission is a marathon, but now it's time to sprint!!

Which is fortunate, because we should have enough time this transfer to get amazing things done, especially considering that our investigators are doing super well!  We had a really tough week as far as numbers go, but David, Esperanza, Carlos, Ivan, and especially Alicia are doing super awesome!

Alicia scared us bad this week.  We hadn't been able to contact her for ages; since the baptismal interview!  We knew she'd be pretty busy, but she didn't even answer our calls.  So, finally she actually called us back, and when she did, she was acting really strange, and after asking who we were she hung up.  We thought she'd dropped us for sure!  But when we debated about whether to go back or not, we decided to try one more time, and found her outside folding clothes.  She acted completely normal!  It turns out that she'd been busy with a LOT of things: Her son Luis graduated, her car got hit, a family friend passed away, and her phone is being difficult, she can't hear anything when she calls people, which is why she acted so weird!  It was a huge relief to see her again, and we'll do our best to help her prepare to be baptized.

In other news, President Castro's farewell was awesome.  I drew a picture of their family for them and they loved it.  I was really inspired by the way President Castro is finishing his mission.  He's been very dedicated, focused and hard working the whole way through, and he's constantly looking for ways to inspire us to work hard.  I really want to follow his example and strive to make the focus of this last transfer go past what I can do: I really want to spend my time helping the missionaries around me love the work and work harder then ever from here on out.

President Felix is arriving on Friday, and then he'll be in charge right away. I probably won't meet him 'till the Tuesday of MLC, and I'm not sure whether that'll be this next week or week 3.  Either way, we'll continue life as normal in the great California Ventura Mission! 

I love you all and pray for you!  I was mindful of Dad on Fathers Day, even though I didn't send anything.  But I'm convinced I've been blessed with the best Father I could have.

Love,

Elder Matthew David Clough