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This past week has been a crazy one. We were just told that on Aug 20th, just 9 days before I go home, Elders Callister and Charrington of the Quorum of the 70, Bishop Burton, the Presiding Bishop of the church, and Elder David A. Bednar of the Quorum of the 12, and their wives, are coming to speak to the mission. Also, 3 days later, another member of the quorum of the 70 is coming to tour the mission. We were way pumped to hear about all this.

Then Sunday night Elder L. Tom Perry, of the Quorum of the 12, came to Perry to give a patriotic devotional. It was not an LDS talk in any way, yet the spirit was there strong. He talked about the Pilgrims coming to America, then talked about the early settlers of Perry. It was first called Porter Springs, because Porter Rockwell started it. Then Elder Perry's ancestors came and it was changed to Perry. It was awesome.

They had a retired preacher from another faith give the opening prayer. So unaccountable. It was about 10 min long, and made no sense. He just tried preaching to us through prayer. The coolest part of the night was before and after though. We snatched some seats on the front row of folding chairs. Right by the door that Elder and Sister Perry walked though. As they walked by, Sister Perry stopped and pointed us out. We stood up and they walked to us. At this time the whole chapel and gym was silent. He shook our hands and asked us how many lessons we had set up for the week. He's big on every companionship teaching 20 a week. We told him we had 10 set up so far (a lot better than the area was a few weeks ago) and he said "Well that's half good enough"

Then he told us to get our ward mission leader to fill up the rest of the appointments. It just so happened that one of our ward mission leaders were sitting right next to us. So it was easy to pass the message on to him as Elder Perry walked away. After the devotional, Elder Waggoner and I stood at the door to shake people's hands and hold the door open for them, so we could get our faces out there. After the large masses had left, Elder and Sister Perry walked up again. He put his arm around my shoulder as we walked out of the church and to his car, and we had a good little chat. I explained we had 18 lessons the week before, and 16 ward mission leaders, so we'll be able to get 20 lessons taught hopefully. He's way down to earth and chill.

The next day was 4th of July!! Perry city was having a fun run. They had a 5K and Mile run. Waggoner did the 5K and I took the easy run. I'm way out of shape. I ended up in 12th place with a time of 7:38. Maybe I should have eaten breakfast?

We stayed up late Sunday night making t-shirts for the fun. We wore black shorts with white t-shirts. We drew a tie on it, and a tag so we could still be missionaries. The back said "I'm a Mormon" and then under it "Mormon.org" It's a big advertisement the church is doing. Gotta always be doing missionary work.

After the run, we got free breakfast, and headed home to prepare for the parade. We got most of the zone to the parade. We all decorated our bikes and planned on biking in the parade together. What we didn't plan on was biking right behind Elder Perry. It was sweet. Waggoner and I rode a tandem bike. It was definate crowd favorite. At the end of the parade, Elder Perry talked to the zone, and took a pic with us. Sweet day!

After that we worked hard and found people home during the day! Not so much luck during the evening though. So we just crashed a party and shot this guy's pellet gun with them. Then we went home and watched fireworks. White trash style of coarse. We took our chairs from inside, and cd player and took em outside to sit and watch fireworks with music. While drinking a DP. Awesome night.

The area is really turning around. We now have 4 investigators with a date for baptism. which is higher than the 0 we had at the beginning. And hopefully that'll just keep going up. We're teaching this hilarious 10 yr old kid, Dylan, who's trying to get us to bribe him to go to church, read, and pray. He wants to get baptized, but told us he'd do all the other stuff if we gave him $100. We told him he'd get blessing for doing it. And he said he wants "the blessings in Benjamins". Awesome kid.

We also started teaching this awesome lady Char. She's an older lady who grew up Catholic in Illinois. She's now interested in the church. Our 2nd time teaching her, we taught the Restoration. And it never fails, when we teach this lesson, and get to the first vision, something interrupts it. Whether a dog, doorbell, or phone. It's going to happen. Well we came up to the First Vision, we told her Joseph Smith went to a grove of trees to pray, and she interrupts "real quick, I have a story to tell you." Works every time. But this time was different. She told us about how she was at Costco and saw a painting. She said it touched her more strongly than any painting ever has. Even though she had no clue was the painting was or was about, she bought the $250 painting titled "The Grove". She showed us the painting of a grove of trees, and from studying it, she could pick out 3 separate sources of light in the air, to which she told us was the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. We told the first vision, the explanation of the painting. And with tears in her eyes, she agreed to work toward being baptized on July 30th. It was awesome! It feels soo great to be seeing success again. The area still has a ways to go, but it's getting there!