E-mail dated 6/8/09

Congratulations on Graduating Brittany. (Why do we say that, weren't we expecting that from you the whole time.) And it sounds like both of you enjoyed the all night party. Wow, its already snowbird week again. I can't even remember the last time I went to that place. I think it was 2006 when the Spurs were playing the Cavs in the finals (don't ask me how i remember that). Looks like I won't go back until 2011.

My week was wonderful. We had a pretty sweet Zone Conference on Tuesday. President Squires gave us some great instructions. He told us some very disturbing Statistics about the church in West Africa. From 2003 to 2008 missionaries have baptized 45,000 + people. During that same period of time sacrament meeting attendance only went up 10,000. Yes, that means 35,000 people are now less active in the church. It doesn't seem to make any sense to us. People here in West Africa have a natural faith, but why isn't that natural faith increasing once they are baptized members of the church? There are two possible reasons for this in my opinion. 1) The branches aren't strong enough to accomodate so many new members 2) the missionaries were not teaching them effectively. I believe that the second one is the biggest reason. This mission has changed so much this past year, i can't even begin to describe how different it is (a change for the good of course). Because of these numbers and what we see in our branches we are somewhat hesitant to baptize people. Now we only baptize people who are truly converted, and have a small chance of falling less-active. I've learned from past mistakes and now we are relying completely on Heavenly father to fix this mess.

Missionary work is going great. We have a saying "pray as if everything depends on God and work as if everything depends on you." I took that saying to the test this week and really improved my prayers, trying to pray as if it all relyed on God. I have always worked hard, but with the second half of the formula we had great results. We went from 4 investigators at Sacrament meeting to 16 in just one week. The lord is blessing us in so many ways. i love this branch that i'm serving in and i'm doing my best to make it better than it was when I came. President Squires said that we are laying the foundation to reverse this trend (meaning all the less-actives that were baptized). It is so true. The missionaries that are just coming now, are going to reap the blessings.

Elder Degen