Received Monday, December 2, 2013

QUESTIONS:

I sent your Thanksgiving gift from Amazon. Did you get it?? You should have!! Please report.

yes! it came on wednesday I think. Couldn't believe how fast it came. We've been listening to it. Thank you!

How was your thanksgiving?

Very fun. The RS president had us over with a few others of the branch. It struck me that she clearly thought about who maybe wouldn't have a place to go, or nearby family, and had a nice group of "church family". There was us 2 elders and a total of 5 others, and I think they were all triple our age, but it really was a very enjoyable time. Heavenly Father has really blessed me here more than ever to love the people of Greenfield branch. We went around the table and all said things we were grateful for.

Did you eat anything different?

We actually had a thanksgiving meal on Wednesday night and Thursday (Wednesday with a less active couple we teach, and it was also very fun). We had regular thanksgiving food at each, including stuffing at each, which i loved! You should make stuffing, it is delicious. No Ham at either. There were rolls, but nothing like what you make at either, and no cinnamon roles. Dessert at both was pie with ice cream. At the RS president's house we had 1 or 2 things I was unfamiliar with, including something that I think maybe is related to the potato, yellow color, the way it was served was close'ish to mashed potato texture. Maybe root-a-bega (that's the sounded out spelling)? not a strong flavor or anything.

IF I sent a picture by attachment, can you/are you allowed to download it and see it?

yes!

anything in particular you want for christmas?

You could send me a couple ties; help me get some variety. Also, I don't know if this will be too hard to find/ship but a tie rack. Some missionaries have those, and I would use that. They have individual pegs for ties.
 

Have you found your ear muffs yet??

yes.

Did you have HUGE snow on Thanksgiving Day?

no! We heard afterwards that it was expected, but never happened. It is a lot warmer today as well. It rained a little bit. The past few mornings we've had frost on the car.

any sports to play for your p-day today??

not today. So we're having a big christmas missionary party (half the mission at a time) again this year, and each zone has to make a skit, or something. We are making a video. We decided to do a parody of "The District" DVD's we get about being good missionaries. Our district is filming our part of it today.

I'm a little surprised there's not more of a Turkey Bowl update. Which side did Quinn play on? did the teams look fair from the beginning, or did the Elders look like they had clear advantage? Who played QB for either side? was it close?

About giving a missionary report, I don't know what you could say. You can tell them I've learned about how fun it is to be obsessed with missionary work. It's a very satisfying and uplifting thing to be thinking about all the time. That's one thing I've noticed about the people (none full time missionaries) who seem to be really good at it, they all seem to be sort of obsessed about it. They just think and care a lot about it.

You can say I appreciate all the people who have/do send letters periodically.

So we've had a few cool things happen lately that I just remembered, but I'll have to go fast, because time is running out.

There is someone we do service for every week who has a couple foreign exchange students. We've always liked them and have thought about the best way to get across to the families (there are 2 of them. All very kind and serving, but say they're not interested in the gospel) last week we were at there house and for our spiritual thought I decided to ask one of the students "If you could ask God any question, what would it be?" he asked, sincerely, why doesn't God just kill satan? We ended up having a really good discussion after that, and he ended up writing out 10 religious questions he would like to know, and we're going to go back and teach them the answers. It is very exciting.

2nd thing: while we were in gospel principles class we were talking about how God gave us the ability to choose, but the Adversary wants to take it away. During the lesson I used the analogy about the guy who really wanted to have his son be an NFL player so he took over his life, made him left handed etc, and it ruined the guy in the end. I thought it was a good and fun analogy. Not as cool as the other things, but I always think its fun when football is helpful.
3rd. the most recent convert of this branch was about 3 years ago, She is now inactive. We were able to start visiting her again. Her boyfriend and another friends just moved in. yesterday we went over and agt first only she was part of our lesson, the boyfriend had to watch the patriots game, which he had recorded (which was also funny because we already knew what would happen because people had been telling us about it all day). By the end we were able to draw him away from the Patriots into a good discussion, and the other friend came over too. They had very intriguing questions for us to discuss (He thinks God is not perfect, because he made all of us very imperfect people. Also, Noah's flood he thought was a sign of a mistake god made and needed to start over). He said he might join a church that admitted that. ANyway we got a return appointment to teach them all.

Also I got an email today from a friend (from Vegas) saying that you haven't posted anything on facebook about updates on my blog, or something like that. Anyway your facebook presence had been missed.

last last thing. This week I've re-read a few gen conf talks, and it really grew my testimony of re-reading them afterwards. They are great! inspiring and prophetic!

Love you~!