Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Christmas week ... Dec. 19

This week brings us an interesting time. So they still haven’t finished our place in Tahoe, which has been tearing our plans to pieces for the last two weeks, but we’re pretty sure we should be good to go this week, so we'll probably be up there Thursday and Friday, in Gardnerville tomorrow (Tuesday) after District meetings, and then Carson the rest of the week. We had an investigator at church from Gardnerville Sunday, so we’re excited to go ask her how it was. Hopefully she felt something and enjoyed it. We’re excited for that.

Work during the holidays isn’t particularly good on one end because a lot of people are in and out of town. That makes things difficult. On the other hand, people feel much more charitable and turn more to Christ during this season, so in that way it goes up. Ends up just being a little different. Unfortunately work schedules get kinda rough too.

Christmas eve we’ll spend the evening with the A. family. Should be a really nice night. They’ll probably have a lot of family over, most of whom we know too, so we should have fun. On Christmas, we'll probably hop between a couple of families. The J., who are a great family. Only two of the daughters are members, but the whole family loves us and we love them too. Not sure if the daughters will have to work that day or not, but we'll still go over there for a bit. then We will have to go to the R. for a while. These families really quickly become family to us here; they are so great!

Things are going pretty well with the training program with Elder Baker. It’s kind of hard to understand the program, but were starting to get used to it. It seems that somehow it is way too much and way too little to study in a week at the same time. Our goal is to survive all 3 areas of training while still giving all of our investigators the time they need. Next to impossible, but we can pull it off.

It’s cold, but for exercise I do a little bike cuz we have a 1970s Flight of the Concords style bike in our apartment. It’s pretty sick. But no snow yet!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’ve started praying for snow! I can’t take it anymore! I think it might be snowing in Tahoe right now. There are thick clouds over the mountains, so I can only hope!

Monday, December 12, 2011

Carson preparing for Christmas


Carson City’s lights are pretty nice downtown, especially by the capitol. Gardnerville is pretty nice too, but not as sweet as Tahoe. But all of them are going to be just ok until it SNOWS! It seriously hasn’t even snowed yet! This is getting ridiculous. By this time last year they were rolling in about 6 inches here and a couple of feet in Tahoe. Everyone is assuming that a huge storm is going to hit us out of the blue one of these days to make up for it.

Yesterday we had the P. family come to church in Carson River, but we were only in that ward for about 20 mins before we headed up to Gardnerville for church there. We hadn’t been there in a while so we needed to get there and I had to give a baptismal interview right after church (number 7 in the last week and a half). We are working on developing a new system for deciding where we are going to go. Our bishop in Tahoe finally has a place for us to stay there, so we will now be doing 2 days a week in Tahoe, 2 a week in Carson, 1 a week in Gardnerville, and then Sundays and P-days will depend on what’s happening that week. It’s going to be absolutely ridiculous. I have no clue how we are going to pull it off, but that’s the goal. Anyway, the P’s have mentioned how different they feel with us and at church.

This week we taught the C. family Gardnerville for the first time, which went great! They sure felt the spirit during our lesson. Brother C. really thought hard about everything we talked about. We tried something different and instead of reciting the first vision, we fast forwarded to it on the restoration DVD and showed that, which I think was definitely more powerful. We also taught M., who isn’t going to be working on Sundays any more starting next week I think, so we should finally be able to get her to church! M. always feels the Spirit. he understands scriptures so easily compared to everyone else that its crazy! The investigators in general that feel it tend to be people that contact us and referrals. Other than that, not so much.

Sometimes the most challenging thing for someone learning about the gospel is the concept of going to church every Sunday. They know they’re supposed to, they just never have, so that’s hard to get a lot. For the most part though, there’s not a lot of difficult stuff. It’s just change that’s hard.

We’re always glad when members teach with us. Members do best when they bear testimony of the gospel in their own lives. We always really appreciate that and the investigators find it more powerful coming from them than from us.

Beyond Christmas lights and teaching? Well, we had a zone conf this last week in Reno and we got to watch "17 Miracles," which was reaaally good! SO that was fun! Today we are going bowling and cleaning. We have a guy from the missionary department coming out with us tomorrow because my comp was part of an experimental 6-week Spanish training district, so they want to see how it went.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

December 5

This week we had a few interesting things. We had to be in Reno on Friday for the “Train the Trainers with the New Missionaries” meeting, and we got back from that around 5ish. We then had dinner and a lesson with a couple of new investigators, the P. family. We also picked up a new investigator yesterday, which was good, because we need new investigators. We also got an appointment set up with the potential family we have in Gardnerville and we are going with a recent convert to contact another potential (friend of her family) tomorrow. So we might be able to pump up our teaching pool a bit. The baptisms canceled because the boyfriend’s dad found out and went nuts. He can’t get baptized until he moves out of his house, and the girl won’t get baptized without him (though she says she is still 100% sure she will be baptized). It was an interesting week. We also had our Spanish sacrament meeting on Sunday, which was very spiritual and great. It was testimony meeting, and there were members going to the front to speak the entire time.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Thanksgiving and transfers

Thanksgiving was good! We had a good time. We won the inter-zone Turkey Bowl football game! As heavy underdogs too! It was pretty fun. We played for a while and then chilled with a couple of missionaries for a good chunk of the day in Reno. Elder Tipa (one of the greatest people ever) was headed home this week, so we spent some time with him before he headed back to Samoa. Hit the Reno strip and just chatted (yes the Reno strip is allowed).

Back in Carson, we went to the Schufelt family for our first typical Thanksgiving dinner (turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, rolls, etc.) and then we went to the Ayala's for some pan con palvo.

On Tuesday before Thanksgiving I got my call to train a new missionary, which meant Elder Reyes was leaving. So we spent much of our time letting Elder Reyes saying goodbye to investigators and members, but also got some lessons in too. The two people we have set for baptism bumped back to the 17th of December due to building conflicts and stuff, but they’re excited. Should be good.

So as of this Tuesday, I'm training a brand-new missionary, Elder Baker. He is from western Kentucky, close to Tennessee he tells me. He has a little bit of a Kentucky accent and is working on his Spanish, but he understands pretty well because his mom moved to the states from Juarez, Mexico when she was a kid, so he has some background. Just not so much on the speaking side of things. He's a chill guy.