Training!

It's been a crazy and stressful week. We had three new missionaries come in which I am training one. It's funny because I came in with 24 missionaries and now we only had three come in this transfer. He is my fourth companion and I'm still in my second area. He is also from California and his parents are from Mexico so he speaks alright Spanish. Hopefully he will be able to teach me a little. He hated the MTC and was excited to get to Texas. My companion loved playing video games at home and also for fun he would do trick shots with a frisbee. Hopefully one of these days he will be able to show me his great frisbee talents. 

I feel so unprepared to train. I just got out here five months ago and I'm still figuring out how to do missionary work. I have been thinking a lot about the talk by Dale G. Renlund in the Sunday morning session this last General Conference. He and many others quoted from doctrine and conference 1:23. Me and my companion don't know that much deep doctrine but we have a strong testimony and we can teach simply and that's all the Lord expects of us. Although I am weak and still learning the principles of missionary work and getting to know the scriptures I know that God will make my weak things become strong (Ether 12:27). 

This week was hard. We haven't had a lesson since Monday night and we have knocked many doors and are trying to clean up our area book by dropping the many investigators that we have. My companion is trying to get use to missionary life and is always tired. I try to help him get pumped and have energy for missionary work but he is always tired. He still works hard though and he is starting to get use to knocking doors all day. I can't wait to have a lesson one of these days so that he can lead out. 

This week my companion has already feel on his bike two times. The second time he broke the gears but we kinda fixed them a little but. He is also very sore from biking all day. Yesterday for dinner a member of the Ward put together a big party so we were able to go and visit with all the members and also we meet a couple new investigators there as well. 

"A Savior is Born"

On Saturday we had our Ward Christmas party. There was a ton of food.The big Christmas event that they have at our Ward is The messiah which is this huge play/musical that the stake puts on each year.

Yesterday we met this Indian family who was from dharmsala which is where the Golden Temple is (I've been there). They were so nice but they weren't willing to change. It reminded me a lot of the great time I had in India and the memories that I made there.

This week we have been showing "A Savior is Born" which has been a great opportunity to bring the spirit into the conversation and then we are able to share a restored truth. It's been such a great blessing to have iPads and be able to show the video on people's door steps. Then we don't have to ask awkwardly if they could pull up the video on their computer. On average we show the video about 3 times a day and our zone leaders told us last night that we need to double that number.

We didn't have any investigators at church again but we meet and talked with many people this week. We knocked many more doors than we have been because we need to find new investigators. We met a man named Danny who we had two lessons with. He has a couple different beliefs than us but hopefully the Holy Ghost will continue to testify of the truth and he will change. We just are praying that he will pray read and ponder the words in the Book of Mormon. Joe Tolman has been
out of town all week and won't be back until the 20th so we won't be meeting with him for another week. Also this week we dropped a few more people as they were either not progressing or we can't get a hold of.

On Tuesday Elder Pino who is in the 1st Presidency of the Quorum of the 12 and his wife spoke to us. We also heard from President and Sister Slaughter. He spoke in Spanish so they had a missionary translate for him. Elder Pino spoke mostly on how we need to make sure that we our focusing on our purpose as missionaries. Then Sister Pino talked about humility and how we need to not be prideful and think that we are better than other missionaries. She went on to talk about how we all have strengths and weaknesses but how we not to compare each other's. It was great to hear what they had to share with the mission.

Christmas here in Texas is weird. Not as many people put up lights and there is no snow so it doesn't even feel like Christmas.

"It's not so much what happens to us but how we deal with what happens to us." 

Beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

This was a great week. First of all I went on exchanges and this time I went to the other elders area. I went with Elder Viatia who is from Tonga. He is such a great Elder. We had dinner with the smiths who is some random member in their Ward but he served a mission in Seattle. Come to find out his mission president was Grandma Hanks. He pulled out some pictures and there was good old grandpa Hanks such a small Mormon world. He told me about the first thing they did and that was go to the mission office and have waffles with ice cream. He still thinks that waffles and ice cream are greatest thing together.

As we have been out riding our bikes and also walking around there have been more and more Christmas ornaments. They have HUGE blow up santa's and other things along those lines. It's weird because this week was a lot warmer than last week so it doesn't feel like Christmas at all. Especially since we can't listen to Christmas music and no snow. But it's all good because I have realized what the real meaning of Christmas is and I would rather be out here than snowmobiling at bear lake and doing all of that other worldly things.

This week we had no investigators at church again. Jamie one of our progressing investigators dropped us so that was a dagger but we will move on with faith that God will put people in our path this week to teach and get to church. Joe Tolman our only progressing investigator now will be out of town every Sunday this month and a lot of next month so he won't be coming to church for a while. He wants to be baptized and knows that he needs to be but the only hold up is that he is scared his wife will kick him out of his house.