Received Monday, Nov 26, 2012

Pictures we got from Zak's Mission President

That is him bending over shoveling sand out of someone's basement

 Here is the whole group. Ok, he is hard to see... he is kind of more on the center RIGHT 

about 4 or 5 rows up...in front of the guy with the big, wide, white headband

Wow, this has been the craziest email news week ever

Did you get any mail this week?

Yes. I got letters from you with many funny emails from nana and Bumpa. Also a few other people in the ward, including a separate letter from all the Jensens from Lydia down. Benjamin included a picture of a gross yellow slug in his.They were fun to get,

From griffin: do you get any money so you can buy stuff?

yes. Every month we get a whole 144 dollars we get to use to buy food and "stuff". When I buy clothes and other non-missionary/essential stuff we use our own money from home

Still giff: What do you eat?

Food. Duh!

Tell us about your thanksgiving day.

in the morning we played soccer with a few families in the ward, which was pretty fun. not nearly as competitive as the turkey bowl, but still fun to do some sporting on thanksgiving then we went home and showered then we went to The Spearin's for thanksgiving meal #1. They had all 6 missionaries plus another couple from the ward and 1 less active member (and their own family of 11). They had all the regular thankgiving turkey and ham and mashed potatoes and gravy and yummy food. Lots of pie. I ate some apple pie with ice cream and cool whip. No cinnamon rolls. Sister Spearin asked me if there was anything missing that I normally have at home for thanksgiving and I talked a little bit about your rolls and she said she might try to make them some time if you gave me the recipe.

then we went to another members house for meal #2. I didn't eat near as much there. They also had most of the regular thanksgiving food, plus some Cape Verde stuff. It was all good. After that Elder Beck and I went of to the Simpsons and helped them with a computer thing and talked to them about some of the less active members we visit with them. It was a good day.

I'm surprised I didn't hear more stats/personal accomplishments from the Turkey bowl. how much did the Oldersters win by? did Dad play? who scored the TD's? were there just not enough athletic/old YM to win even with Christopher gone and Chase gimpy?

That really is a bad day to get sick. At least he got that sweet job. What is an easy description of what Chase does/will do? is it just a coincidence he's ending up so close to home?

I feel like the Steven/Heather Cole Family will be so different when I get home. 2 (at least partially) walking talking babies by the time I get home! I bet Jayna won the prize for most exciting thing to be grateful for.

For us it was mostly another solid week. A few people who we thought would finally come to church didn't which was a bit of a bummer, but there are more sundays to come.

I still haven't sent home my flashdrive full of pictures. hopefully today.

Last week we were all supposed to report if we needed any furniture or anything for the apartment, so we requested a table and 4 chairs and got them, which was cool. Also we got a mini Christmas tree and put a bunch of junk under it (weights, a volleyball Halloween skeleton) to look like presents. It even came with lights, so that's cool

We have one investigator, Miranda, who I think may be willing/wanting baptism soon. She's been meeting with missionaries for like a year, but she's now reading and praying every day and keeping all of the commandments. The only tough thing is she's 16 and has no real family support, so she would have to be strongly converted to really stay with it.

We still are spending a good amount of time with Chris, and he's learning well. He should get the Aaronic priesthood in the next week or 2.

We continue to spend a lot of time with less active/innactive members, which is good, but i'll really be excited when they start coming to church/making tangible process. It's important to try and see the long term vision though. 

We just visited a family yesterday, where they aren't sealed in the temple yet because the father was just baptized a year ago, after 12 years of seeing missionaries. Now he loves the gospel and will get to the temple soon.

Early this week we were visiting people on the ward roster we didn't know about, hoping they would still live there and let us in (this is often what we do with time we don't have appointments. also we'll tract around the houses a little too) and we talked to this guy on the street who really praised us for what we do. He said he was Muslim but really appreciates that we actually live what he say we believe and go out to preach it. He took a book of mormon and said he would have it finished in 2 weeks because he loves to read. His name is rob. we told him we were looking for Bill Swan and Rob said that was his neighbor and introduced us with him. We then had a pretty good meeting with Bill, who seems to have a testimony but hasn't been to church in forever. Before we left Rob came back in and gave us a Red Sox jersey he says he doesn't use anymore! (Elder Beck and I will roll dice for it). We'll be back later this week to see both Rob and Bill.

Hopefully I'll have a good update on that story next time!

Love you all, have a good week!