August 11

Hey everyone-
This will be a really fast email because we had a Mission Olympics today and I am out of time to email. It was a blast getting together as a mission and coming up with team names and then competing against each other!
This has been a very busy week and one of the highlights was when Elder Richard Hinckley came for our Zone Conference! I loved the opportunity we had as Zone Leaders to meet with him on a personal level and listen to the advice he has for our mission! He reminds me so much of his father, President Hinckley and he also has a wonderful spirit about him! I wrote all the details for that day down in my journal because I loved everything he said!
Another amazing highlight this week is that we have two amazing investigators! We found Anna and Daisy while tracting last week. Anna is 19 and her sister Daisy is 17 and they are from Great Britain. They have the nicest family ever, her parents are both atheist, but letting Anna explore other religions! The two sisters have had a lot of Mormon friends and admire them greatly. Anna even had her own Book of Mormon. She has loved the lessons we have taught her and is willing to meet with us often to learn more! The only problem is she is moving to Boston next week for school! So we are going to prepare her in all the ways that we can and then we are having her commit to us that she will find missionaries in Boston to baptize her!! I was a little sad we aren’t going to be able too, but we have a great relationship and we help her any way we can! Ingalisa is doing amazing and is still on target for her baptism next week. On Sunday she got up with the young women to sing a
song and it was a great joy for me to see that! Her mom is now becoming active in the church again!
Well our zone is seeing a lot of success and the Lord is truly blessing us! We now have 9 people on date for baptism which is unheard of in this Zone! I couldn’t be happier!!
That’s about all I can update you on sorry for the short time, but know that I love all of you and that my heart is truly in the work!! Keep the faith-
Elder Russell