Ha
ha I love that picture I saw of you guys with Elder Holbrook! I'm glad you were
able to go to his homecoming talk. Of course he did a good job; he was a great
missionary. Yeah, we did get to see each other quite often. It seems like
there's an endless supply of meetings. I'm
impressed Elder Holbrook knew every city I had served in! That's a lot to
remember, but we were pretty close, so I'm glad to hear that. I'm sure he isn't
too worried about the quality of the apartment… It seems like we've been to
some pretty dumpy place is out here. There have been some exceptions of
course;)
Don't
worry about me slowing down. I may have a lot of weaknesses and a lot of things
I still haven't learned yet, but this is all I know. Plus I don't have time
slow down; there's too much going on :-) Plus the time seems to be slipping
away too fast, but there is still so much to do. I love the areas I'm serving
in and the missionaries I get to serve around. It definitely will be fun for
the next six weeks. Saturday night I got my "Trunky papers" and have
been pondering upon that. It definitely can be distracting, but as for part of
it I'm supposed to write about my most cherished spiritual experience since
being on my mission. As a result of this I've spent the last couple days and
will continue to spend the rest of this week reading through all of my mission
journals looking for spiritual experiences. I really have enjoyed doing this as
I get to reflect upon the many miracles I've seen and the great times I've had
so far. It really is giving me a lot of motivation to keep going strong and
being obedient and working hard.
We
are very excited for this upcoming Christmas. We got an email this weekend from
missionary headquarters about another Christmas initiative the church is
launching. It's really cool to see all the different ways the church works and
how they advertise. There will be a lot of new pass along cards, DVDs, websites,
and other things that can help us find more people to teach. The Christmas
season really is a great time to be a missionary, and I am enjoying the fact
that I get to stay out here for one more Christmas. I hope that doesn't put too
much of a damper on your Christmas plans, but I will see you guys not too long
after. I hope you don't save all the excitement of Christmas until I get home
as it will be so short between when I get back and when I leave again, but I
look forward to whatever lays ahead… But I'm not going to worry about that
right now. Thanks for taking care of things at home so I don't have to worry
about it. It really helps a lot. The more I can focus on what's going on out
here, the easier it will be, the more successful I will feel, and of course the
happier I will be.
The
work is going fantastic in both units! This past week we set another baptismal
date with one of our investigators. We had a mini missionary with us from
Wednesday until Friday night. We were anxious to show him around and let him
see what missionary work is like, but we did have a lot of meetings and reports
we had to do as well. He was a good sport and went along with everything. On
Thursday night we had a set lesson with an investigator we only recently
started teaching. We were onto the second lesson, the plan of salvation and had
practiced and prepared to present that lesson. As soon as we got in there and started talking
with her she mentioned how she had been reading out of the Book of Mormon and
praying about it. We continued to
discuss, following the spirit, and she told us that she really felt the church
was true. This point we recognize that there was no reason to wait so we
invited her to be baptized right then, five minutes in the lesson. She accepted
and is now on date for December 20. It was a very exciting lesson and I was
happy that the mini missionary got to experience that. The rest of the lesson
went excellent as well and looking back I'm not sure there's any ways that
lesson could have gone any better; my companion and I taught very well in unity,
the mini missionary taught his assigned section of the lesson very well, the
investigator responded to our questions with wonderful answers, and at the end
she even offered to pray and it was a wonderful prayer. Miracles just keep
happening no matter whether it's the beginning of my mission or the end. We are
excited for the plans that we had ahead of us.
We
had zone meeting this week as well. Elder Larson and I planned for that and
we're excited to get to see all the new missionaries, both new to the mission
and a newly transferred to the zone. As we were pulling up to the church
building we noticed one of the missionary’s cars was in the orchard. It had
been raining the past few hours and so we were sort of concerned, but as we
drove by we noticed that no one was in it. When we got inside we found out one
set of sister missionaries in attempting to make a U-turn, had driven to the
orchard and gotten stuck. We continued with the meeting and resolved to address
the problem later. Afterwards all the missionaries went out there to see what
we can do. Before we decided to have all the elders get out and push we
remembered that we had a tow strap in our new truck. We drove it over and after
putting it into four low and getting it all connected we tried to pull it out…
And lo and behold it came right out of the mud and right onto the road. It was
pretty funny. Just another advantage of having a truck ;-)
As
far as the whole Chico thing goes, I haven't heard anything from the mission
president yet so we will see. Of course I'm not going to pester him about it so
we may not find out what's going on until transfers on 14 December. If I get
transferred back to Chico, then great. Otherwise I can happily finish my mission
here in Oroville, there's plenty to do. I'm not sure I can give you any
direction as to where to send any mail or packages until then but I will let
you know soon as possible. Also we careful not to send out to much right before
I have to bring it all home. I can wait eight days if that's the requirement
:-) The Mission has some directions about how to get our bikes home. I remember
helping Elder Coburn with his. I just need to find a bike box from one of the
bike stores around here, and then they have a way we can ship them home for a
reasonable price ($20?). That will just come out of my mission allotment as
well as my fees for baggage on the way home. I guess it pays off to have enough
saved up that I don't have to worry about that stuff. I will let you know as
soon as I start sending stuff home, but it may be a couple more weeks before I
start thinking about that.
That
basically sums up this week! I will try and send some pictures here soon.
Hopefully you get the memory card I sent home!!! There were a lot of great
pictures on there. Let me know if I can do anything for you guys, and I will
talk to you again soon. Take care!
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