New Comp #7

 Firday December 25th: Today was CHRISTmas!! It was so awesome, I got so many presents from friends and family and I am just so grateful for all them, even the ones who didn't get me presents lol! I truly have the best family and I love all of them so much and I am so lucky to have such amazing supporters back home. Elder Eccles and I read Luke 2 before opening presents. Later our fetching phone service dropped!! We were like "uhh, what are we going to do now?" Our cell service is literally our missionary work at this point! We went to go see if the sisters were having the same problem and they were. We decided to go to the church and the other sisters had the same idea as well lol! We all played basketball and nerf wars and some talked to family too. It was great! We went to dinner at the Merrills after and they are so sweet! They gave us a gift, just like food and snacks and stuff in a stocking. It was so sweet of them. We went to the church after and used wifi for Facebook finding to finish off the night! Came home and somehow found a place for all my newly acquired things, and then passed out, it was a great Christmas!

Saturday: Well, service was still gone all day today! Kind of weird! We heard it was from the explosion in Nashville which is really sad. So all day we did Facebook work at the church with the district. It was actually really fun, at least I thought it was! We don't get a lot of in person contact especially with our district so it was fun to just talk and get to know them all better. We invited one person to church and two people to set up future lessons! Pretty cool stuff just coming from Facebook! We finally got our service back literally on our way home at the end of the night, so hopefully that sticks around. Big things coming tomorrow, catchya then! 

Sunday: Today was sweeeet! We had an awesome church service and then Chris' baptism!!! It was so great!! I got to baptize him and Elder Eccles is confirming him next week! We had such a great time, he is a stud! Afterwards, we had lunch then watched part of the gospel study class and contacted. We had dinner and then did a bunch more finding and we called into the most amazing lady ever!!! Her name is Lisa and we taught her the restoration and ended up putting her on date to be baptized! We are meeting in person tomorrow, it was so cool!!! Definitely a tender mercy from the Lord! We finished off with a super tender mission wide devotional with recent converts bearing testimony and focused on the importance of us being here and the effect we can have on people. It was super sweet, I loved it! Twas a good day. 

Monday: Today was good! We had a busy morning finding and contacting and then went to do a church tour with Lisa from yesterday! She didn't show up... but sent her son Jon to come get the Book of Mormon. It was kind of unfortunate though because we had a member ready to meet her and so it made it super awkward for her to be there with us and an 18 year old guy that we can relate to better than her... it was good though. We gave him two Book of Mormons, one for his mom and one for him and he left. We had an awesome meet up with a guy named Jomel. He is guy I've been talking to on Facebook for weeks! We finally met up and it was so awesome! He was so cool and had the happiest spirit, it was great. Afterwards we went to a retirement home to meet this lady named Sheila. Some other elders have been teaching her so we gave her a large print Book of Mormon and Bible and talked to her for a bit and then went on our way. We had comp study followed by a night of finding and an interesting lesson with Garret (as always) over the phone. 

Tuesday: Had an awesome district council and then we all went to lunch at Arby's but Elder Eccles and I picked up Wendy's and met them there. We had an awesome lesson on the phone with this lady named Heather after and talked out the Gospel of Jesus Christ! We had a great sit down lesson with Chris and talked about families and specifically temples and temple work. Then we had an interesting lesson with this lady named Baker, she is so sweet and started crying when talking about Christ. She said she believes He visited the people in the ancient Americas, but she didn't want a Book of Mormon to learn more about it... we talked for awhile about the good it could do and set up a time on Thursday to call back and see if anything changed. Then after dinner we met another super cool lady we cold called and she loved the idea of being baptized by fire as well and agreed that the Holy Ghost is so important! We put her on date for 31st so hopefully all goes well! We finished off the night with a call with another guy named Chris who lives in Oklahoma. Super cool restoration lesson and it was great. Transfer news: I'm staying and Elder Eccles is leaving! Wild. 

Wednesday: We had a great lesson with another Facebook guy named Elijah this morning at the church and it went really well! Another person who accepted a date to be baptized!! It was awesome, another great restoration lesson. Later we helped Melissa move some stuff off her deck and then cleaned the house in preparation for transfers. Elder Eccles packed up and we headed down to Nashville. I picked up Elder Thacker who's from Altamont Utah and I think we'll get along really well. We came home and he got unpacked during dinner and we had a decent lesson with a lady named Jennette just talking about the plan of salvation. We did a lot of finding and then found a real cool dude named Perry....who just KNEW it was the Lord who sent us to him and he needed to meet with us. It was so cool! Hopefully it actually happens and we can meet up with him tomorrow!! Nothing else too special today! 

Thursday: Today was sweeet!!! We had an awesome lesson with Melissa just reviewing some chapters. We invited her to read and then made her baptismal calendar! The 16th is looking really good and we are super pumped!! We had weekly planning and then had a decent lesson with a guy named Austin but he cut it off at Joseph Smith and said his boss was calling :( We had a Facebook meeting and then an amazing lesson with Perry!! Like literally one of the absolute best lessons on my mission, it was so so so good! He loved it and I've never seen it click like it did for anyone else the way it did for him. Long story short we put him on date for the 23rd and are PUMPED to keep meeting with him. We had great lesson with some members named the Richards and then did a lot of finding and found a couple sweet people. If they go anywhere you'll here about them soon enough! Happy New Year everyone!!!