Caught up: Jan. 23

This week should be pretty busy. Zone conference here on Thursday. We will be in Tahoe Thursday night through Sunday church. We are going to be speaking up there this Sunday. Should be a good week coming.

We’ve stayed in Tahoe a couple of times now – back in the cabin. We stayed up there Friday night and woke up to between 5 and 6 inches of snow! Came down the whole day! It was great! Snowed down here in the valley last night so we've got some on the ground here too. That’s huge for the area because it was getting to be a not-good drought and the economy was taking a hit without snow at Heavenly. We had some good stuff though. We met most of the leadership in Tahoe over the weekend. We went to a lot of their houses to meet them and share some spiritual thoughts about missionary work and getting things started there. Still waiting on a lot of the potential to come through but so far so good. We also met a few of the less actives and had some wonderful conversations with some of them. Hopefully will be getting a few back soon!

We taught Elsa the first couple points of lesson one. She is very interested in it all and says she really doesn’t know much so everything is new for her. She never knew what a prophet was and was excited to hear a description. It was a pretty good little lesson and we also found out she used to work with one of our best members! Good to have somebody already set up to fellowship her. We also taught Lorena in Gardnerville and she has committed to baptism, but not to a date yet. She has to get married first and needs to consult with her husband on that. I think it will happen though. Let’s see, We also got to talk to Jorge in Carson a little bit, but unfortunately he wasn’t there for the lesson we set up and he didn’t go to church either. Actually we had around 11 people total commit to church and had 0 go. That was a little depressing, especially after really getting in and committing so many people. We will just have to go this week and really make sure they all understand why it’s important.

Last week was a leadership training – in Fallon! It was suuuper weird going back! Great meeting though. Just what we needed. Talked about the importance of love, how to explain how the spirit works with people, etc.

Jan. 16 -- finally posted!

This week we taught around 8 lessons, I think – not a lot. We did some tracting (door-to-door contacting), And some work with some members to try and get some referrals, but a lot of time was taken in travel. We were in Carson, Gardnerville, Tahoe, and Reno all this week and didn’t really have enough time in any of the areas and at the same time too much time! Nobody was home in the time we set out for each area, so we had to resort to backup and backup backup plans but that left our investigators untaught in the little time that we had to be in each area! We went by every investigator several times because it is sooo important that we see them but catching them at home has been a nightmare! We'll see how this week goes because time will be limited due to a leadership training, interviews with president, and a couple other things goin on. Hopefully we can work around everything well!

Oddly enough I think that this week’s most spiritual experience was one that we were not even present for. A couple of our investigators finally made it out to church this week in Carson for the first time but unfortunately we were in G-Ville! I was so excited to hear that they were finally able to make it there because we have been teaching them for a long time and one of them (sully) wants to get baptized! Hopefully this is the start of a good trend of every week attendance. We are hoping to have a lesson tonight to see how they liked it and commit them to keep coming and to a baptismal date.

We finally got to talk to the bishop in Tahoe and everything! He is fantastic! A very, very good missionary bishop, as all should be. He really understands the work and the help that we need to be able to really get the work going up there. Before we met with him we tried to find a referral and some less actives but only found one less active guy, though we had a nice conversation with him. We hope in the coming weeks things will be getting more and more organized. We should have at least 3 referrals coming in soon for up there but probably more! Hopefully we can get to teach all of them as fast as possible. It just snowed a little bit yesterday morning finally, but it sounds like we might be getting some real snow this weekend, especially up there.

Finally back again ...

On New Years day we went to church and then spent some time with a few member families around. It was a relaxed day and we enjoyed it. New Year's Eve the English-speaking missionaries in Carson came over and we played some games and chatted for a little while and then tried to go to bed with fireworks and party music going on all around us. Not the easiest of things to do, haha.

We were up in Tahoe for P-day last week and wow, it is absolutely incredible. Unbelieveably beautiful. We hiked to the beach and skipped rocks for a while and felt cold sand between our toes, haha. I reached down to touch the water and I really think it may be the coldest liquid I have ever touched in my life! It was a really great day though. In the 50s and lower 60s even! We also went to almost every ski and snowboard shop we could find...which was a lot, haha. Oh, and there’s no snow. It hasn’t snowed at all. The mountains are now completely brown again except for the runs at heavenly where they make snow at night. It’s ridiculous. We also ate at a diner which had the most incredible view. I wont be able to post a picture this week, but next week I will for sure.

In Carson, we were preparing the P’s for their baptism which finally happened this weekend! Yeaaa! They are super happy to be finally baptized and absolutely love it. They are already seeing blessings! Pedro told us he hasn’t had a full night sleep in 20 years but the night after his baptism he slept all the way through and felt great! He could also read the words of the opening hymn at the baptism which he can never do! It’s super cool. We are also now pushing for referrals in Carson harder and it looks like we should have a few of those coming in too. We are also trying to make contact with the son of an investigator who can’t go to church so can’t really progress. She wants her son to go and we taught him the first lesson a couple weeks ago and he liked it. He’s just not sure what he wants to do yet. We also got to see E. again. Unfortunately she didn’t make it out to church so this week we will have to find out why not (she was in Mexico again for the weekend).

We've also been to Tahoe of course, but we didn’t find ANY of the people we were trying to see in Tahoe...though we did get to know some members better. Sounds like some referrals coming!

We got restarted in Gardnerville after not seeing our investigators there for a little while because they’ve been out of town and stuff. It’s been pretty crazy. We taught a lady named L. again. She has actually gone to church twice now and we committed her to really get started on reading the Book of Mormon because she hasn’t had to do that (she has 3 girls the oldest must only be like 4). We will be seeing her again on Thursday to check up on her to see if she has read and prayed and also to teach lesson 2 probably. Then also in Gardnerville, there is the C. family who is basically the same deal minus the having been to church. Hermano C. is very interested and has a strong desire. We will be teaching the whole family the plan of salvation on Thursday. We built a little bit more of a relationship with the kids last week, so they like us now and won’t see us as strange guys in their house.