WEEK 21  

"We are just spiritual beings having a human experience"

Merry Christmas! 

This has been one of the best weeks so far. It was Christmas week plus we were able to do a lot of fun things. It is always nice to see my family. So this week we find out if we are staying or going. Usually transfer boards are out by now, it's about 12:30 right now so while I am typing this I might just interrupt myself and tell you guys about it. Anyways I will start with the miracles.

The biggest miracle this week was when we Skyped to our families at the Berniers and after we were done Amanda told us that she got her answer. She told us that while she was out side with the dogs she was just thinking about how much we missed our families and that we were still out here. She told us that she just got this overwhelming feeling that Joseph Smith is a prophet and that the Book of Mormon is true. She told us that us being out here even though we miss our families that we must be doing this because we know this is true. We talk to her more about it and told her to pray about a date to be baptized and she told us she would and that she knows that she can stop smoking. That was super crazy because before she told us that she didn't think that she could quit. So that was the coolest miracle. We are hoping to set a date with Amanda and Rourke and have them baptized the same day. We hope to see if we can get Blaine to be baptized with them as well, but we will see.

Now I have some bad news. We talked to Jonny Banks who is teaching the temple prep class to see if he could come out with us and teach. He told us he couldn't but he had some news for us. The Fickle's came up to him after the class and needed to tell him something. All Jonny said was that James is still struggling with his word of wisdom issue. He told the Fickle's to just talk to us about it because we will know what to do about it. So then when the Fickles took us out to dinner they told us about James and how the past few days he has been drinking a lot. They said that James was going to just lie to us and say that he has been sober and still be baptized. He really wants to be baptized and go to the temple but Satan is working against him. We are trying to find a way to talk to James about it without feeling like the Fickle's tattled on him. But we definitely cannot let him be baptized yet, he is not ready. So that is something we are working on with him and hopefully we can still get him baptized.

There are a few more people we have been teaching that are progressing, but they aren't close to baptism yet. William is  one of those people. He is super interested whenever we come over and has always had a lot of questions. He said he came to church last week, but we never saw him and he said he was coming this week but I don't think he did. Hopefully we can see him come sometime soon. We are also going to be able to start teaching Brent again if he is still interested. So that will be in a week or two. He had a baptism date set but said Satan worked against him so hopefully we can get that all figured out. We should be able to start teaching Steve again, the person who makes violins. Since it's after the holidays it is going to be a lot easier to schedule things of people. A lot of people have just told us to come back after the holidays because they are so busy. We met this lady named Kelly who was shoveling her neighbors driveway and we got out and helped her. She doesn't have a church and we invited her to our church but sadly she didn't come. We are trying to go back there and to see if we can take some members with us. We also saw this lady named Sheila who is an ordained minister but doesn't go to church because she hasn't found one she likes. She is a little crazy and laughs superhard and everything but she liked having us over.

So this week we were not in Red Wing as much. On Monday we went up to Cottage Grove for a district P Day. When all the sisters got there we built our gingerbread houses and ours it was definitely the best. And then we went into the gym and just play games. We played three hit staying with a volleyball and we also played a game called signs. It was really fun since we don't see missionaries very often. There are some areas where you are super close to other missionaries and you get to do that kind of thing every P day. 

Tuesday was really fun too. We went on exchanges with our zone leaders and I went up to Hudson with Elder Oldroyd. We met in Ellsworth, which is in our area, and stopped by a less active that Hudson has. Then we went out to River Falls and spent most of the day there. We met this sweet old lady named Janette who is super awesome. We gave her a Christmas present which was just popcorn but apparently she loves popcorn and eats it for dinner sometimes.  Elder Oldroyd told me that she also loves frozen grapes. Elder Last and Elder Oldroyd baked sweets with her last time they were there. While we were there we shared Luke 2 with her about the Saviors birth. We also met this really cool guy named Kareem who actually lives in St. Paul but was visiting a friend. He was super knowledgeable about the Bible and he says every religion is good so he didn't talk bad on our religion. He also said something which I put in my quotes. He said "we are just spiritual beings having a human experiences." Then while we were trying to see some people in this neighborhood we decided to knock on this random door because their lights were on and when she opened the door I started talking to her and she stopped me to ask me why we were outside it's so cold. Then she let us in and we were able to share the light the world video with her and set a return appointment with her. Her name was Carol and she was super nice but a little awkward. The last thing we did that night was go and see some recent converts, Aiden and Gage. They are both still in high school and their grandma used to be a member but removed her name. She reached out to the missionaries and told them that she wanted to be baptized again and that she had two grandsons that wanted to be baptized as well.  So while we were there we played go fish! Ha ha and then taught them about the Saviors birth. Elder Oldroyd said it was super cool to teach them because all they knew was that Jesus died. They did not know much more than that and didn't know a lot about the Savior.

So then Wednesday morning we went to Eagan for district meeting and met Elder Last and Elder Huntley at the Eagan Sister's apartment. We usually do not have district meeting in an apartment we usually do at the church but we all went to Eagan because we were having a district blitz in Eagan. So after district meeting all of the missionaries in our district did missionary work in Eagans area. Eagan used to be an elder area but they just barely put sisters in and they don't have a lot of work. So we decided we would help them out and do this blitz.  I got to go with Elder Last again and it felt just like when I was in New Prague I really missed being with him. And then after we all met up and talked about it.

They took forever for transfers so I'm just putting it at the end. Drumroll please… I am staying in Red Wing with Elder Huntley! But one of my zone leaders, Elder Oldroyd is going to be one of the assistants to the president. Also they put sister missionaries in New Prague. I talked to the assistants to the president saying that New Prague needs sisters so I pretty much did that.  Well not much else happened this week so I look forward to talking to you guys again next week. I love y'all so much!

Elder Bullock

Elder Huntley and Elder Bullock's creation

Goofing off