December is upon us! Blessed Season!

Buenas tardes!     Dec 5 2011

How do you say BURRRRRR in Spanish?

This week was a good one as well. I am pretty sure that most of my emails start out like that, but it really is true. We did have some trials this week, but we learned and grew and worked through them. The weather basically changed over night. On Tuesday it was around 50 and sunny and nice. Then on Wednesday night, we started to get a really cold wind. We then came out of a lesson to see that it was snowing a little bit. Well that little bit of snow, then turned to a lot of snow. We woke up to about 8 inches of snow on the ground. It was a pretty interesting dealing with the drivers of Utah. You would think that they would learn to drive in the snow since they get it every year, but somehow they manage not to. The snow still kept falling off and on over the rest of the week. We still have about 10 inches of snow in most of the town, but the roads are pretty decent now.

We had a really awesome zone conference this week. It was with Elder Claudio Zivic of the Seventy. It was a pretty cool opportunity to have him and his wife come and visit our mission. He was a really good and powerful speaker, even though he had a language barrier. He is from Argentina, so he was always looking to his wife for certain words he didn’t know how to pronounce. We even got a nice little meeting with him afterwards. He is a really amazing person; he has a great sense of humor as well. We carried the Spirit with us for the rest of the night and hopefully we are still carrying it with us.

Most of last week and the first part of this week, we have been dealing with a lot of trials. We haven’t had the greatest success with people coming to church or even finding them home, but our luck turned around a little this week. We had some pretty awesome experiences. One was with this lady named Rita. We haven’t seen her for about 2 weeks, and we finally got a lesson with her. We just went into it and picked up where we left off, but she stopped us and asked us a question. She then started to talk about how she has had a lot of different religious missionaries come to her door in the last few weeks, and she wanted to know what was the difference and how she could know which one was true. So we just went right into the Restoration and bore powerful testimony to her about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. She just seemed to stare blankly, as she pondered what we said. She didn’t have to say anything for us to know that she was feeling the Spirit. We are looking forward to our return appointment, to see what happened from there. So stay tuned to see what happened with Rita.

Another pretty cool experience happened with Cris. The missionaries have been teaching Cris for quite a while. He has wanted to get baptized and he knows he should, but he wanted to wait a little not to cause family drama between him and his wife.  We actually invited his wife to join in on the lesson. (None of the other missionaries had ever thought to do that.) We started to teach Cris and Maria together, and this week we found out some concerns that Maria had, then out of nowhere Cris asks a question about modern prophets and authority. We started to answer his question, but before we really could, he answered it for himself. He bore testimony that this was the true church, because God himself had restored it to the earth through the prophet Joseph Smith. That the Priesthood authority of God had been restored to him and that no other church could have that authority. It was such an amazing moment for us to see that Cris is truly converted to the gospel. Then about 3 days later, he did it again! He started to bear testimony again on how he knows that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet and that the Book of Mormon is true. I am just hoping that he can continue to help his wife progress and that they can be baptized together.

Two cold elders looking for someone to teach! :)

With the snow this week we had to take to the streets and knock some doors. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it does get pretty cold after you have been in it for a while. Mainly my feet get cold, but it was a good experience, it will be one that I will never forget. We did get a chance to watch the First Presidency Christmas Devotional yesterday. It is always good to be able to listen to the Prophet and to be able to get in the true spirit of Christmas.

NEWS FROM HOME: Well Mom, I am glad that your birthday worked out and that you were able to get some random gifts. (I went and saw Hugo with Marilyn! A tradition!)  (The Mom also met with the Bishop this week to update him on Emma's living situation and Dad's possible job!)   Well I am glad to hear that the Bishop is being supportive. I have never met the man, but he seems like a very wonderful man, and I will look forward to meeting him. It is good to hear that the missionaries came by for dinner as well. The new one is from Sandy. (Elder Boswell) That is right next to where Elder Castro (Chad's previous companion) is from, they may have even gone to the same high school. It is interesting that Southern Virginia University is still calling for me. (And offering $8,000 scholarship!) It does seem like they would help me out a lot, but it still is a long ways away. I don’t know how much I would like that aspect of it. I could even try to play for some sports team while I was there, but I still have a lot of time to think about that. I was looking into schools a little bit ago. I think I am going to try to apply to BYU-Provo again, and maybe Eastern Washington. If all else fails, I have already been accepted to BYU-Idaho so that will work out. But I still have until April to start thinking about that. Well I love you all! Thanks for the support!

Live it, Love it, Preach it!   les amo!    ELDER D