Week 18 - I never thought it could be so cold

This week was SO cold. Tuesday was by far the worst. I didn't know I could be that cold. Biking in the snow is really hard. Especially in crazy wind! It was seriously the coldest day of my life! We haven't had to stay in because of the cold yet, but the YSA branch cancelled their sacrament meeting because we were expecting a HUGE storm yesterday but it wasn't even that bad. 

I am excited to get a new companion! I'm not sure who it is yet, but I am staying in the same spot for at least the next 6 weeks. I'm also pretty nervous about it. I just hope I'm ready! 

I wrote to him about a quote from Elder Uchtdorf's talk Living Life Joyous from the last conference about living the commandments:  Yeah I haven't read that talk by Pres. Uchtdorf, but I have heard that quote before. I love the idea that God ALWAYS wants to bless us, but he is just waiting for us to let him. I have definitely seen in my own life that I am happiest when I am obedient to the commandments. They truly are a blessing. 

I wrote to him about some things we talked about in Stake conference, 1) Member referrals are much more successful investigators, 2) Serving others is a very effective missionary tool:  I have definitely seen the truth behind both of those things in missionary work. When a member refers a friend, as Pres. Hinckley said: "there is an immediate support system". It helps so much to have that friendship and support from the very beginning. I haven't had a ton of opportunities to do service in order to find people teach yet, but that is something that we are considering doing. We might start shoveling people's driveways in the neighborhoods around our apartment.

Daren relayed a story to Josh that we heard from a visiting seventy at our stake conference, Elder Von G Keetch about a team of baseball players that one by one decided to throw a game during the last at bat to allow a disabled boy to get the winning home run and the first hit he ever had that season.  It was quite a moving story of service:  I love that story about the baseball player. Loving one another definitely applies to missionary work too. It would be really hard to serve someone without first loving them. 

Yeah I heard that Colts game was pretty good! That would be fun to have them win the Super Bowl while I'm here. Go Colts!

We wrote about some fun recipes we tried on Sunday:  Wow all that cooking seems like a lot of work! I definitely miss all of your food though! Tortillas are good and all, but they seem to be a little fattening ;). I miss your home cooked meals!

That's good that Dad has joined you in your "Project Swoll" ;) wish I could join you guys! I definitely miss being able to go to the gym every day. 

This week has been pretty good for our area. We have a lot of good things happening recently that are opening some doors for some potential baptism candidates. :) The sister Missionaries in our area have been trying to teach this Hispanic lady named P. for about 2 months now (which is frustrating because she literally doesn't speak any English so I don't know why they didn't refer her sooner.) They were teaching her with the help of her daughter A. who also speaks English. It turns out that during their lessons, A got interested and she ended up getting baptized about a month ago. Now the sister missionaries finally decided to let us come teach P and she seems really interested about the church. They are from the Dominican Republic, and all the Dominicans I have met are pretty hard to understand so we'll see how it goes!

One of the more discouraging things this week happened with our investigators O. and V..   We went over to their house to teach them our fourth lesson, but V. (the husband) wasn't home so we just taught O. (the wife)  She read 3 Nephi 11 in the BoM, so we answered her questions about that and then we went over the Plan of Salvation for a little bit. At the end of the lesson we decided to ask her about baptism. We have already invited them to be baptized twice and they hadn't really given us a straight answer, so we just asked her if she had been thinking about it. Then she told us that it was no where on her mind and she had no intentions of changing from the Catholic religion. She stated that she really likes when we come, but she doesn't seem to understand that our church is THE church of Christ on the Earth. She thinks that all churches are more or less the same and that they will all lead us to the same place. So luckily, she still invites us to come talk, but it will be tough to get anywhere with her. 

Thank you for everything you do for me! I love you and thank you for sending the iPod! You're always in my prayers!