May 20th- "I"ve run out of clever tag lines"

Well, another week has come and gone, I can hardly believe it! Today I am emailing from Ledgewood NJ, we came here to do our P-day with Elder Kempler. His companion as well as Elder Duncan's companion, Elder Memmott, went to see the Statue of Liberty this week. In our mission they have a statue trip every transfer for the departing missionaries. Elder Memmott is going home this transfer. He keeps saying that he can't believe how fast 2 years went by.
It sounds like you have a busy week. I was reading the list and it made ME exhausted. So, right now is field day. I am so excited to hear that Nick is graduating!!! I always knew he could do it! You'll have to send me pictures from the ceremony tomorrow. Elder Boyer's sister is also graduating tomorrow. Are they having it in the Marriott center?? Wait, is that this week or next week???? either way. (It is actually next week, Isaac is a week off)

Oh, quick story. Elder Boyer and I were knocking the other day, like we always do. We were talking about things, and part of our conversations was about how, a lot of people, when we say who we are assume that all Mormons are from Utah. Well, in all my previous companionships, Except with Elder Barker, I was from Utah, but my companion is from like, Missouri, or California, or Wyoming, well, we're both from the same high school, so we really can't disprove the theory. Well, we were talking and he said "I'm just going to say from now on I'm from Puerto Rico" and I joked back, "I'm from Canada, we'll just jump back a generation and say where our Mom's are from." We chuckled about it, and that was that. A few days later we were talking to this lady, and when we asked if she had ever heard of our church she said that we were a cult, and she was worried for our souls, and then she asked us if we were from Utah. I said yes, then Elder Boyer just said "I'm from Puerto Rico" and I tried hard not to laugh, and she just kept going off on us.

We've been doing well here. This is probably the strongest ward I've been in. It's a really good-sized ward, and the ward-mission program is really good. The ward mission leader, Brother Bean is a really nice guy. The missionaries, we are just finishing up a program that was started 2 trasfers ago. They called many of the member families on 42 day missions. They made up little call letters and call packets. The call letter said something like "you have been called to serve as a missionary in the New Jersey Clinton Ward. It is anticipated that you will serve for a period of 42 days. You will prepare to invite your friends to come to church, to meet the missionaries, etc." It was really neat. The member families set goals as to how many invitations they were going to make during the 42 days. Several of the families have finished now, and we are doing the "homecoming parties" We have a little video that the missionaries made, and we have them sare testimonies, it really is a neat ward missionary-type program. This week has also been really neat, we had a really awesome lesson Yesterday.

Well, Yesterday was an interesting day, full of ups and downs. Yesterday morning we got a call from a member in our ward, who's husband is not a member, and has been meeting with missionaries for about 3 years. Last week we invited him to set a goal, a date, when he wants to be ready for baptism. well, it was going good, but him and his wife had an argument in the middle of it, and it was a mess. Well, yesterday she called us and told us that he doesn't want to meet with us. She said she thinks he's embarassed, so we lost an investigator Yesterday.
Then, later in the day we had a really awesome lesson with our 1 remaining investigator, we had a member come with us, and the lesson went really well. His name is Jeff Rascoe, and he is really awesome. He had been meeting with the Sister's about 6 months ago, and we looked him up in the Former's section of our area book, he is doing really well.

Things are going well here in Clinton, but it is a little down-heartening. We knock for a long time, we work really hard, but nothing ever comes of it. For example, we knocked for 4 hours on Monday, and we got 1 potential investigator, who, when we called her, proved to be really not that interested. We will continue to work hard and pray, and hopefully we'll be able to see some success here.

I love you all and miss you so much. I hope everything is going well for you back home.

Love, Elder Isaac Ellsworth.