30 Nov 2015

This week was awesome. For starters I got my first baptism. Well I didn't perform it and I came into the mission the day we set his baptismal date, But I'm still counting it. His family was less active and he wasn't a member. One day one of the bishops just said you could check on the Kisleys but I don't think you'll have much success. Well the whole family is active and excited about the gospel now and they can't wait to be sealed in the temple. It was one of the coolest experiences I've had and it just really excites me to do more work.

    Monday- P-day was fun as always, I still need to figure out how to shop, Half way through the week I keep realizing all the things I should have grabbed. I didn't take much as far as groceries so this week mostly consisted of eating Nutella waffles. After zone activity we had two lessons fall through so that stunk. The only lesson we ended up teaching that day was to an OAY (over aged youth) Shes nine years old and her parents, I guess, just always got busy so the baptism never happened. We took her on a church tour and showed her the font. during the lesson the parents really opened up and I think they were the main thing stopping her from being baptized. We have a date for her on the 26th.

    Tuesday- Lots of excitement for one of our investigators. So she and her boyfriend were on a walk the other day and decided to just go to the temple visitor center. We couldn't go because it was during P-day hours so we had no idea what had happened. Early in the morning we went to check and see if anyone remembered their visit. It turns out the spirit really touched them one of them started crying (the good kind of tears). They just really felt the spirit and got a bit more excited about the church. Later that day we had a baptismal interview with Brother Kisley. The first questions are just yes and no about faith in God, Christ and Prophets. Then we asked him what does it mean to you to have a prophet. His face just froze. I guess he thought it was all yes and no, But after a bit he answered and from there on the interview went well. At the end of the night we checked on a less active family. The dad was in the truck about to leave and no one old enough was inside, so we talked to one of the sons and the mom on the doorstep. The whole time the dad is yelling out of his truck "Hey I want to drink and smoke, Can you leave so I don't feel bad?" Some of the comments he made were hilarious but he didn't mean any harm.

      Wednesday- Our dinner cancelled on us right away so we had to leave our morning studies to meet with them and they gave us some food. We talked for a bit and they were called to be mission presidents in Africa. They had some pretty intense stories about cars getting robbed at gun point and all the precautions sisters had to take. After our visit it was time for District meeting, since there are only four of us I already got assigned for a training. But I totally rocked it, Honestly it was all the spirit because I had no idea what I was suppose to do. After that we had a lesson in one of the most unstable house holds I've ever seen. They seem to want to change but they are something else. The parents are rather violent to each other not abusive they are just both aggressive people, and they want to raise the kids to be "tough" so at one point the mom encouraged them to fight. As we left we had reason to believe that one of the kids ran away through the bedroom window. We couldn't find her but I'm praying a lot for that family. Things got really interesting at our house because today the Spanish Elders moved in. So with the four of us living there and the fact that we all get along great it can be tough to be proactive in our studies. We ended up keeping each other up until midnight and once I talk about tomorrow you'll see why that was especially bad.

       THANKSGIVING- sooo today was basically a p-day for us but we had service in the morning. at 6 am so we woke up at 5 just to wake up to a snow storm of 6 or so inches already fallen. It snowed till at least noon. The service project was organizing the turkey trot a 5 to 10k run for charity. We got to direct traffic from 6 to 9 am it was pretty cold out luckily I'm used to it and my comp from Phoenix ended up loving the cold but a lot of the missionaries were not happy. After 9 the race started and we had to set up stuff for the finishers and congratulate people as they finished we were there until about 11 o clock. It was a fun day. So luckily with all the snowfall it ended up being my day to drive. Last winter Elder Gillespie had a walking mission so this is his first time driving in snow.The rest of the day was pretty much just meals until they had us do zone activities. We settled on board games because no one wanted to run.

       Friday- Elder G and I both had the same chapters during personal study 1 Nephi 17-19 and we both had one very prominent question. What kind of boat did Nephi build because it says it was a curious ship not of the design of man but the design of God. So we are both really curious on what made it so curious. Anyway that's not important. We had much more spiritual realizations when it talked about Moses and the plague of serpents. After being bitten by a snake the people just had to look upon a statue to be healed. But it was so simple that many did not understand how it would help and they ended up perishing because they would not follow such a simple commandment that they didn't see the point of. This can be related to at least some what to the Word of Wisdom or other modern commandments. People don't see the harm in drinking coffee, tea or alcohol so they refuse to follow the commandment, Now honestly its not too hard to refrain from doing those things but people don't understand how it will benefit them so they refuse to keep the commandment and don't receive the blessings. After our studies we went to see the Kisleys because tomorrow is the baptism. We got them all prepped and ready to go. The program was all set up and they had finished all the lessons. We had a few appointments fall through and we realized this would be a good time to go and see a guy we met by chance named Mike. I think I might have mentioned him last week but we went to apologize because we missed an appointment, Well we got there and he had a real hard time opening the door. Come to find out he just got back from the hospital and his power was shut off his house was literally freezing and he had no thick blankets. We ran around quick to get him what he needed to stay warm and honestly he looked ready to just collapse, By the time we got back he couldn't get off of his couch so we covered him up made sure he was good for the night.

       Saturday- BAPTISM DAY!!!! The baptismal service was amazing it was very focused around eternal families. I haven't felt the spirit that strong to many times in my life. After the baptism things were pretty slow we couldn't get any lessons set up so we just talked to some of the ward missionaries, and got to know them and tried to set up a few things with them. The second family we met I connected with great. They are both recently returned missionaries from.... WISCONSIN. Sister Stafford actually served in Gresham and it was just crazy to meet them. We had a productive meeting and got a lot of things set up. They are so fresh off their missions that they still have that missionary mind set. A lot of good things could come from this.

        Sunday- I had a talk today on the gospel of Jesus Christ. I spent about a whole hour preparing it because that's all the time i had. I only wrote about 5 scriptures down and that was what I had to work with. Elder Gillespie was pretty surprised at the fact I took up the whole 15 minutes with no actual talk structure written down. It felt like it went well and I hope that the members actually listened at least a little bit. We didn't have much for lessons planned so we went to knock a few investigators. W went to one house and they didn' answer. As were walking back to the car we got a call from bishop Whipple. At the same time Bishop Peterson was diving past and Elder Gillespie talked to him. In those 10 or so minutes we got about six referrals, followed up with two of them and its looking really good.

 The Stafford's pet.

Thanksgiving day with Alison's sister-in-law.