Hello! Hope you all had a Merry Christmas. It was my second and last Christmas as a Missionary. It has been a pretty good week. It seems like it's generally been harder to meet with people and find. We didnt do any tracting or calling to meet with members on Christmas and Christmas Eve (for good reason). So it's been more social media and some park finding/walking around neighborhoods and talking to people we pass. Except this week we also did a ton of Caroling! We went on 3 different days this week as a District (forgot to take pictures) to our different wards. Even though I feel like Caroling is a little weird, it was really sweet to see all the members and non-members that were touched by it. Sometimes we would be caroling at a house and someone nearby would compliment us. Then we would go over there and ask them what their favorite song was. It was really cool, and it's something we can really only do during this time of year. But other than that a lot of people have been out of town. Yesterday we went tracting for an hour or 2 and we only had like 7 people answer. We've also found out that a lot of members are going, or already are out of town between Christmas and New Years. But it's been good. Christmas and Christmas Eve were pretty regular days except we could spend more time at our meal appointments and we got to call home. I did also keep up with the family tradition of sleeping by the tree.
Elder Quiner and Gudino joined too, but Reinhart didn't want to ):
Here are a couple other things for this week
- Had our friend Bryce at church on Christmas! Good to see her there. Hope to be able to begin teaching her more soon. She's good friends with a member family and that's why she comes. It's been hard to meet with her but we still communicate.
- On Monday we delivered the last of our goodies to our friends and other members. One visit Michael, didnt answer, and so we ended up just leaving the brownies for whenever he came by. After dropping off the brownies, we normally stopped by to make sure they got it but we forgot to do so with Michael. We were walking by his place on Thursday and we were pretty sure he got them but we thought we'd double check. And they were still there! I don't know what it is with some people. We know he was home at some point because the cards we left were gone, and he'll also leave his skateboard out when he's home. But for some reason he didnt take the brownies. Hopefully that doesn't mean he's not interested anymore. The brownies were pretty stale but we weren't just going to let them go to waste.
- In Personal Study I read Moroni 7+8 today. Super good.Chapter 7 is probably my favorite in the Book of Mormon (except for those in 3 Nephi). There were so many verses that stood out to me, but one that I wanted to share was Moroni 8:3 "I am mindful of you always in my prayers, continually praying unto God the Father in the name of his Holy Child, Jesus, that he, through his infinite goodness and grace, will keep you through the endurance of faith on his name to the end". It reminds me of Brad Wilcox in his talk "His Grace is Sufficient" saying that Grace is not the light at the end of the tunnel, but it is the light moving us through the tunnel. I just thought that was cool. I would invite anyone to read those chapters.
We had a really good District Council yesterday. We are coming up on the last week of the transfer (5/6) and this was how we were doing on our Key Indicator goals. New People taught: 3/10. Church attendances: 21/50. Weeks of people being on date 3/6 (This ones a little confusing. Basically what it is is how many weeks one person has been on date. For example: If a friend is on date for 3 weeks it counts as 3 instead of 1). People Baptized: 0/1. It was a pretty big oof. Things in our area have been especially hard for me. I'm at 11 weeks in this area today and we've only begun teaching one person (they moved too). So throughout this whole time we have not been teaching anyone. As we were reviewing our goals, it was proposed that we should have our goals for this last week be: 1 New add per companionship this week (4 total). 10 more church attendances this next week, and 1 new person put on date for baptism. Thinking logically, I really did not think we would be able to begin teaching anyone new. We have had so much potential for so long, but I've been doubting whether or not we will actually begin teaching anyone because it's been so long. But, as a district we really prayed, trying to know what God's goals were. We believed that if we involve the Lord in the goal setting process, and really work hard to achieve them, that it will happen. I'm still somewhat skeptical, but I also believe in Miracles, and I hope that we can really work hard this week and achieve our goal as an area to within the next now 5 days (by Sunday), begin teaching one new person, have 2 people to church, and maybe have 1 new person on date. I really liked this quote that we read from Preach My Gospel "If you lower your expectations, your effectiveness will decrease, your desire will weaken, and you will have greater difficulty following the Spirit". I have been struggling to have a vision of high expectations for this area, and I want to be more faithful. Prayers this week are greatly appreciated.
This is the only other picture I have for this week. My desk has become more crowded over time, but I feel like those are all essentials. Especially the Rocktopus. The new additions from Christmas are the picture of my family (That one is the only one in there that has everyone else), the oil lamp, the Lego Millenium Falcon, and there's also a little lego basketball hoop with one of those characters that you can shoot with (springs in his legs).
It was a good Christmas! Love you all and appreciate all your love and support.
- Elder Wride
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