MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Everything here is going great. It's a little cold but it's all good. The new area is going great. Here's a little more information about the area. We cover a few small towns. We cover Wanship, Hoyetsville, Coalville, and Henafer along with a few other smaller ones. The people here are amazing. The members are great and help us out in the work. We haven't had to go tracting yet we just work off of referals. We're having a baptism on Saturday at 6 at night. It's for a guy named Jim Willoughby. He's so solid. He and his wife are already excited about entering into the temple in a year. It's pretty sweet. Then we have 4 more people on date for January. The Tedikas who are a young couple with 2 kids. He grew up in the church but never got baptized and the girlfriend grew up in a baptist church I believe. But they're going to get baptized on the 15th and get married on that date or before. They're still deciding on that. Then there is a girl named Katelyn that we're working with. She's 13 and her mom was inactive but is coming back to the church and she's supposed to get baptized on the 1st of next year. We're also working with some Peruvians. They're not on date yet, but I think they'll get baptized in January. It's great. We get to teach in english and spanish. They don't have a spanish branch out here so we have to translate the sacrament meetings into spanish. So good things are happening and we're just trying to keep the work going forward. It's a good time. Monday I did 24's with the missionaries in Green River. So I went all the way out there for a day. It's like a 2 hour drive from where we live. It's a lot different working here than in the valley. Everything is a lot more spread out. It takes a lot more time to get from place to place. I'm kind of tired of being in the car so much. Tomorrow we're going down to Salt Lake to pick up some Christmas packages that the office has been holding so that people don't open them up before Christmas. So we're driving down tomorrow and then delivering them on Friday. It's going to take around 5 hours to deliver them all and get back to our area. It's going to be fun.

Well as far as Christmas goes, the stake president invited us over to his house for breakfast around 10:00 in the morning. I don't know how long we'll be there for. And then, we have the baptism at 6 at night. And we'll have to fill the font up from around 2 until 6. Well that's about all I got for y'all right now. Have a great rest of the week!

Transferred to...Coalville, Utah

Well just to update y'all a little bit of what's been going on this past week... On Sunday at church Yadira came to the english ward again. I translated the whole sacrament meeting for her. It was a good ole time. Then our other investigators were progressing really fast and they should have a few baptisms coming up. As for me, Like I told y'all last week, we had transfers. And I got transferred out of the area. My new area is................. Coalville, Utah. I'm now serving in the Wyoming zone. It should be interesting. A lot different than serving in the Salt Lake Valley. We cover 1 stake, but we cover english and spanish. So it should be fun. My new companion is Elder Salisbury, he's from Cincinnati. It sounds like we have a lot of work going on in this area. Hopefully we can get double digit baptisms this transfer. And from what I've heard the members are amazing. They are all about missionary work and they love us. The stake I'm in used to be shared with another stake, but now we're there all the time. They used to only see missionaries once or twice a year, but now that they see us more they're more excited about the work. So it should be a good transfer! Right now the mission is doing pretty good. We're sitting at a little over 2200 baptisms and our goal is 2500 so we'll see how we do on that. It's definitely possible. Oh and on Monday I went to get some surgery done on some ingrown toenails. It went pretty well, and the doctor didn't charge me anything for it so that was good. Well I don't really have too much more time because we've been dealing with transfers all day and haven't got back until around 5. Well I can't really tell you about any of the investigators, because I haven't met them. But I'll have more about the work for you next week.

Testimonies of Christ

Well Everything here is going well. It's only been a few days since I've e-mailed home so there's not too much to update y'all on. Our investigators are progressing pretty well. One that we have, Yadira, went to church on Sunday with 2 of her 6 kids. Her husband is in jail, and she has a 4th grade education. And she doesn't work. So it's a pretty bad situation. But she went to church to an english ward and my companion and I translated for her during the whole sacrament meeting. So it was a pretty fun experience. While it was going on I got up and bore my testimony in spanish. Which I thought might make some people mad because it's an english ward and some english members do NOT like to hear spanish. But afterwards there were 2 or 3 people that got up and said that they had a grandson or someone else serving in spanish and it let them get a glimpse into their lives. Then the man sitting in the pew behind us got up and bore his testimony. He said that he had been listening to us translate the whole sacrament meeting and that he wished he could speak spanish to say something to her. It was a good meeting. The Spirit was strong and for the first time in a long time the testimonies were about Christ/gospel related topics and not about stories from the week and how they don't have a job.


Oh today while I was leaving the temple I saw President Fronk and Stephanie. I talked to them for a few minutes. So that was pretty good. Well I got to get going.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Well we found out that we wouldn't be e-mailing tomorrow because of Thanksgiving. The computers would all be shut down. So we're doing it today. Well We were at church on Sunday and they announced the baptism of Jali. And as they were announcing her getting baptized, from the congregation they announced that her little brother would be getting baptized as well! So now we have 2 baptisms this weekend. It should be pretty amazing. I'll be sure to get some pictures.

We've been doing a lot of tracting lately trying to find some investigators. We ran into some really nice Nepali families that like to stare at us, but they are awesome. Yesterday we had "a life threatening blizzard" and the "worst storm of the century." So what we did is we went out and tracted during the blizzard because we were supposed to be out working. It wasn't too bad. There was a lot of snow. But I didn't think it was too bad.

And last big thing that happened this week is that I was experiencing an ingrown toe nail for the past month or so. I was trying to let it grow out. But it wouldn't. So I called Sister Winn and she told me to go to the mission doctor to see if I would need to get surgery on it. SO I go and he tells me that I would just let it grow and then he looks at it and says "that goes pretty deep in there." He took out some scissors and started cutting away at my toenail until he got to the base and then he tore the ingrown part out. So I went through the surgery without any anesthetics. It was fun.

Oh and my card was compromised. My mission one. And somebody tried to charge $900 to it. So the church cancelled my card. I'm getting a new one in a few days though. It should be good! Well hope y'all have a great Thanksgiving!

Kindness from Strangers

HELLO!


Well this week I'm going to try and make it the week where I write more than I have been.

Well It's been a great week. This most exciting thing that happened to us is that we finally have somebody that is solid on date. The one I wrote to you about last week, he fell off. He's been avoiding us. But it's all good he's not elect and there are other people prepared for us to teach. But the person that is on date now is somebody we've been working with for a few weeks. Her name is Jali. Her brother is a recent convert of a few months. His testimony is still on fire and his wife is amazing too. So we asked them last Sunday if we could do a FHE with them. But they couldn't do it on Monday, so we set up an appointment on Wednesday. It turned out that Mike (her brother) and Farrah (sister-in-law) planned out a FHE. Farrah gave the lesson and talked about baptism the whole time. Then she committed Jali to be baptized on the 27th. It was so amazing. Jali said yes. Then everybody in the room and shared something they liked about each person. The Spirit was so strong. There was a lot of crying and all that good stuff. So a few days passed and she talked to her parents about it Saturday night (they're Catholic) and they were telling her it was too fast and all that and she told them she knows it's true and bore her testimony to them. We're hoping that her younger brother Mike Kevin will get baptized on that day too. He needs his parents permission first though. So we'll see about that.

The work right now is going kind of slow. We have 4 or 5 investigators right now. 2 of which could be getting baptized pretty soon. And a few we might be dropping. But we have some appointments set up for tonight that might help us add some new investigators. We'll see. But things here in the zone are going alright. We got the numbers for the week called into us Sunday night and as a zone we only had 5 people on date and 15 progressing investigators. So Elder Widenhouse and I counseled and talked about what could be the cause of it. We came up with a list of all the reasons we've seen on our missions of why people and past zones haven't baptized. We were talking about them and one stood out to me. It was that the missionaries didn't feel needed or didn't feel their self-worth. So the training we had to do was on revelation through prayer. And it's the 4th or 5th time we've been trained on this topic. So we went over it quickly and then gave the missionaries 30 minutes to ponder. We gave them some note cards. On the cards we wrote for them to write 3 questions they have for God and 3 things they are passing through right now. And on another card we wrote a letter to them about the things we liked about each of them. And had them write what they were going to do for the zone daily to contribute to it and 1 thing they could do to realize their full potential as missionaries and people. We didn't know how it would go over. We thought some of them might think it was weird or not take it seriously. But afterwards we talked to some of them and they thanked us and one of the sisters said "It's like God told y'all that I needed that at this time." It was such a great feeling to know we received revelation.

Today we went to Kohl's because I had those 3 short sleeve shirts mom sent me, and I wanted to exchange them for long sleeve ones. Because after the mission I won't need short sleeved shirts. So I went to do an exchange and of course they couldn't give us an even exchange which I thought they would've given us as missionaries. But we were at the customer service desk and I figured I could exchange 2 of the short sleeved ones and get a long sleeved one and keep one of the short ones. So I was going to do that when they said they couldn't even exchange it. And the lady next to us wouldn't let me do that. So she was like "use this 30% off coupon, and I have this that you can use" and all this other stuff. Then the total came out to be around 20 dollars for the 3 shirts. And she gave me a 20 dollar bill and looked at my companion and asked if he was getting a shirt, and he said no. So she told him to go pick one out and gave him a 20. So we were surprised. Then after it was all said and done she pulled out two 5 dollar bills and told us to go buy lunch with it. So I ended up with 3 long sleeved shirts and a short sleeved one, and 5 dollars. It was so crazy and a little embarrassing. But oh well. It was good.

Well I think that's about all I have right now. I'm going to get off and let somebody else use the computer. They only allow us to have 6 people on the computers at a time.

No Snow Yet!

Well everything here is going well. The winter snow hasn't started yet. It's started a little bit, but not too much. Probably by next week it'll be covered in snow. Oh well.. There's not really too much to report on work wise. Actually we have an investigator on date. It's a former investigator that we found that has agreed to get baptized. He's a little shaky, but he should be good. We're helping him become more solid We went last night to go see "El Salvador del Mundo" with him and a less active family we are working with. It was really good. It's a play/ musical about Christ at the conference center. He's from Mexico. The less-active family is from Puerto Rico. They are a good family. Right now we are really working on finding more people to teach. Other than that it's good. We're going by two of our investigators that are pretty close to baptism as well. So The work is going a little slow. But it will improve, no doubt about that. Everything in the zone is going alright too. Missionaries are good so there aren't any big problems. Everything is good. Well I can't think of anything else to write really. It's kind of late. I'll make sure I write more next week.

Ward Council Training

Well Everything here is going well. I stayed in the area with Elder Widenhouse. So we're still zone leaders over Millcreek Zone. There weren't too many changes with companionships in the zone. The new AP is Elder Dominguez my old companion. So that'll be fun. So no big news with transfers.

The Halloween party went well. We went to a members house that was huge. They live by the Allisons, the Butler's cousins. We carved some pumpkins and then Elder Widenhouse and I came up with some questions for a newly-wed style game and jeopardy. It was pretty fun. I'll send some pictures next week. I forgot the camera. We had a ton of food too. So I'm scared I'm getting fat. Because everybody gives us candy, and junk food, and so it's tough. I'll just have to lose all the weight after the mission.

Sunday was an eventful day. We spent from 9 AM-4 PM teaching 4 different wards how to hold ward council and what tools they can use to share the gospel. It was interesting. So I'm becoming pretty good at speaking to large groups. And good at training on how to have a proper ward council to stake presidents and other ward council members. Then when we got done teaching we went out to the parking lot to leave and somebody had busted in a window on the car. Along with another member's car. So the member called the police and we spent an extra hour there cleaning up, talking to the police and all that good stuff. OH and Friday night/Saturday morning around 4 a.m. somebody broke into the chapel and lit 2 chapels on fire. It was pretty crazy. So they had to relocate church in those 2 buildings. Investigator wise we're still working with the same problem of investigators not feeling ready to be baptized. So that's a little tough We had an appointment with the family with two kids but they had to cancel it. So we're going to be meeting with them on Friday I believe. Well I got to get going.