Hey everyone!
It's the third week of the transfer already. The time just goes by super fast. I'll be honest I'm not excited for Christmas... At least the call. It's alright though. It'll be good. I think we'll do the skype thing in the morning but I don't know where or anything like that. That's still a whole 9 days away to figure that out. We won't figure it out for at least another 9 or so days.
That's so cool that you saw Colin and Hailey! Tell them I said hi! I knew that the other Steven's kid was coming back from his mission so that's got to be crazy cool for them. :)
That's crazy about the weather. It's been crazy here too but in the opposite way. It actually rains! It's pretty awesome actually. I love it. :) I think this week we will get a lot of rain... I hope so!
Oh man I got to tell you about the miracle of the year with Mayra. Ok so back story, we've as a mission been working towards this goal of 75 baptisms before the end of the year. We started on Halloween. We prayed every morning and night and have been doing these other things but everyone's goal in the mission is to get a baptism before the end of the year. Now Mayra is the closest investigator to getting baptized but she is having an old elder fly in from Utah and baptize her on January 3rd. Very unfortunate. We kinda just accepted it and worked at other people. To be baptized an investigator has to go to church at least 3 times in a row and last Sunday was the last chance for someone to be able to be baptized before the end of the year. No one came to church. So we were kinda sad about that. But that night we went over to Mayra's house and she told us that the elder flying in said he will be working on the 3rd and can't do it then and asked if he could move it up a week. To the 27th. :) We didn't say anything about us focusing so much on the baptism before the end of the year and it was a straight up miracle from Heavenly Father. So that's what's up with her. :)
Maria and Jose are difficult right now. I know they will be baptized but it's hard right now because we've gotten to teach them the 10 commandments. We only got to the 2nd one because they pray to idols. Fun fact the most common Hispanic name is Maria because of the Virgin Mary. They pray more to the virgin than Heavenly Father. I've had investigators refuse to pray to God because they only want to pray to their saint. So it was a rough lesson. It's alright though they'll get it sometime. It will just take a bit I feel like. hopefully things will work out good soon though! We haven't been able to meet with Cindy this week... She's really good too though and I'm sure she will get baptized as well.
The temple was awesome! Same temple but they had a bunch of Christmas lights out! It was so cool. :) We had a different driver though. He was pretty fun too. He all out ran a red light. It wasn't even close. Fun stuff. :) Other than that nothing too crazy. It was so much fun though and so cool. It's kinda cool to see how much I've changed in even 3 months from the last temple trip. I feel a lot more spiritually prepared and I catch things in the sessions that I haven't before. Cool stuff. :) And I guess there is a benefit to going to the temple once every 3 months with just being able to feel the spirit so strongly. It's so nice. :)
We went on exchanges this past week and it was so much fun. We had a great time. We did something different where it ended up being like a 4 man thing where we took turns with different companions for different parts of the day. Brand new and interesting. It was way fun. Elder Campbell threw up after eating at this restaurant we had a gift card to from a member. I don't know it was just fun all around. It's how I would imagine college to be like. :)
I'm good health wise. I'm getting chubbier I think. I don't know really. Running is good. I run most mornings yeah but I don't really do other things. I probably will start doing at least push ups and stuff. We'll see. I've honestly never really noticed the bad California air! I'm sure it's awful but it doesn't bother me really.
So this past week was crazy. We had a bunch of meetings and stuff and we got a general authority Elder Baxter come over and talk to us yesterday. We also had a Christmas thingy on Thursday and that was way fun too. Just lots of training's though. We did this white elephant thingy and I gave away this nasty fake leather jacket I found in Elder Campbell and Tucker's apartment and I got this awesome book about the geography of the Book of Mormon. Super cool. :)
We've also gotten into playing sardines as a district. Because we eat a lot together at the church because a member doesn't want to feed us in their house or something so we have been turning out all the lights and playing sardines. It's so scary but so much fun at the same time. :) I love it. We also have been practicing for these songs we will sing for caroling and next Sunday for church and we also sang yesterday for the general authority thing. Lots of singing. It's way fun though. Especially in Spanish. We got O Holy Night the other day in Spanish but just the words and not the notes and I love going through and figuring it all out. It's so much fun. :)
Ok I'm running out of time so thanks for everything! I love you! Have a great week!
Brandon
