I hope that you had a Merry Christmas and a good New Years this week. Life as a missionary will hopefully get back to normal after the holidays. Haha. Many people are not receptive to hearing the gospel during the holidays... which is actually the best gift you can get :)
This week was good. We were spoiled by the Ward Members here in Elmira and they were so good to us. I don't want to even hear the word cookie or pie for at least 2 weeks. Lots of presents and lots of games were played this week.
We were much more subdued with teaching investigators and less actives this week. Most were busy, not at home or sick. We didn't get to do as much as we wanted, but that is just typical during the first winter months on a mission. Tuesday, we had a fun district meeting about Christmas and also companionship unity. The best part was the white elephant gift exchange.
We did however get in touch was Nadine and help her with her concerns with committing her time and talents to the Church. I was actually proud of her this Sunday. She participated many times during the 2nd and 3rd hour, and gave normal responses and wrote down all that she learned. Hopefully, Feb & March we can help her get baptized. We also got this great "Book of Mormon Christmas" picture book from the RS President to borrow and we used it all week. It is the birth of Christ, but from the Nephites perspective using mainly Helamen and 3 Nephi to tell the story. It was super good. Everyone loved it! We used that to teach William and a few others also. We didn't use it on James since he doesn't celebrate Christmas, but we've worked hard on him this week, to receive revelation and answers to prayers about the Church being true. He is still holding on to a few things, so it's apparent that HF is trying to teach him patience and humility and obedience by not answering right away, even when the question is of eternal importance.
Wednesday, Oh my, we had to make cookies and treats because we were going caroling that evening with the Elders and the Ward Mission Leader. With us being broke missionaries, we bought the cheapest brownie mixes and with our lack of kitchen supplies, our poor afternoon was a mess of trying to fix this steaming pile of mess/gross brownies and other treats to give out. It was super weird. We prayed that the Spirit of Christmas would touch their hearts and they would overlook our fail at Christmas Cookies. But, we still had fun!
We had quite a few cancellations and had dinner then we went caroling. We sang in Elmira mostly and it went well. It made the Ward Mission Leader's day because he was having a really bad day.
We also saw James again and taught Will the Law of Chastity. It all went well, but I am still the most awkward person ever talking about the Law of Chastity to anyone... let alone a single older gentleman. Thankfully, things got more serious when he talked about his family and we could easily transition to blessings of being pure. Kinda a basic day.. cookies, presents and caroling. We did however, give Will and Jim new ties for Church. They both loved them.
Christmas Eve... I fixed all of the computers in the Elmira Ward family history library so we could Skype and we saw some members/LA in nursing homes. I have never been to so many nursing homes in my life till I came to New York. It was good to uplift people that don't really have anybody. I read more of the Christmas book to our recent converts and then we went to the Christensen's for dinner and games. We had Mexican food and played Uno and Phase 10. We spent the whole evening there and got to have good family time fun. They gave us Christmas cookies and gave us a present or two also. It was really sweet of them. We then finished our 12 days of Christmas Scripture Ding Dong Ditch. That was fun.
Christmas Day, we opened presents. Some were very practical, others weren't so practical... then we went to Denny's with Jim and got breakfast.
We saw Nadine, we had lunch and then we Skyped our families at Church. It was so good to see my family!
Then, we partied at the Gabrishe's. More board games and Christmas music and pie for days. So exhausted by the end of the day because of the craziness of being with 4 elders and 4 young crazy cute energetic kids...
Saturday was a baptism of a daughter in the Ward. We invited Will to come see it and he did. He loved it and learned more about baptism. That was super great. The Ward is doing well with being friendly to Will. It helps that he already looks and acts like a member. Hopefully he will get baptized b the end of January. We are planning for the New Year. We got new planners! We then tried tracting to find people because we had nothing to do. That wasn't all too productive. People were not too happy. We had dinner with the Scott's and had our typical follow up lessons with James and Will.
Church was great. I had to give a talk in Sacrament meeting about goal setting and receiving exaltation. It was the first time in my whole life, that when I prepared my talk, I didn't write it out word for word . I used references from General Conference talks, scriptures, and personal experiences and analogies and looked up at the congregation like 95% of the time and wasn't nervous. In fact, I was told to speak for 5 to 7 minutes.... but I may have purposely spoken 10 to 12 minutes. Another Elder also had to speak as well as our 2nd Counselor in the Bishopric and he loves deep doctrine. He was giving his talk on exaltation too. I knew many investigators would be in the audience and I wanted to make sure they understood the things that he was going to speak. I spent lots of time talking about Grace, the Atonement, Salvation, our pre-mortal identity and destiny and a brief overview of commandments and ordinances to get to the celestial kingdom. I am so glad I did. It was the first time I have ever heard someone in a Sacrament talk quote from the School of the Prophets, the Lectures on Faith, Bruce R McConkie and the King Follet Sermon, CS Lewis and the Idea of Theosis, and the Pearl of Great Price. Talk about Deep Doctrine. I have a testimony since my mission about the plain and simple truths of the gospel. So important and so much fun too. Everything was great though. We taught this new LA man who will be here for the next month or two and saw a few others.
We got quite the punch in the gut from Jim though. He skipped Church and wouldn't call us back. We finally got a hold of him and he was at Dunkin Donuts. He was about to be interviewed to receive the priesthood, and it scared him... so he ran. He doesn't wan the responsibility and he basically told us that he just like going to Church for an hour and keeping the commandments. It was super sad. he regressed so much in 2 days because of fear of getting a calling. He doesn't want one and he doesn't want the priesthood. Then he felt bad and guilty, so then he wouldn't even look us in the eyes. That is the hardest part about being a missionary, loving people so much and wanting them to progress, but having to let them make mistakes and fall so that they can learn and feel the power of the atonement. GRRRR ....but this is life. We all move on.
Today we played dodge ball with the youth. They are so awesome and we went to the chiropractic.
The Church is True and I just Love the Gospel So Much! Have a Safe New Year.
