It's been a while...

Hey everyone!

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. But don't you worry. I am alive and well. And a lot has happened since my last update. First off I am no longer in Haines City, serving with Elder Watson. Which is kind of a sad thing. Elder Watson and I were planning on staying together for at least one more transfer and I was very positive that I would remain in Haines City for the rest of my mission. But that didn't end up happening. I am now serving in Cape Coral with Elder Dooley. We are having a great time and like serving with each other. But first, I think I'll post some stuff that happened during the transfer with Elder Watson!

First off, Elder Watson has been collecting ties for the past 6 months or so. And he has definitely gotten up there in the numbers. One day, we decided that we wanted to hang all of his ties on the wall. Some missionaries out here do that for easier access to their ties. I do it. So I talked him into doing it. Oh what an adventure that was. Take a look...

This is the before picture...


And this is the after picture. Pretty crazy, eh? Yeah, he's got a lot of ties. At that point he was at 3o0. Now he is at 320!

We even had started to teach somebody. Jim White. He was a really cool guy who was engaged to marry a member. He was very interested and he even said that he knew the church was true in our first lesson with him. Unfortunately, we weren't able to continue to work with him because we actually were both transferred from the area. He does now have a baptismal date. I am way excited for that! We aren't sure why President Colton decided to transfer both of us. He said that we would most likely going to stay together. Oh well.

And now, like I said, I am in Cape Coral with Elder Dooley. We are having a great time so far. We had interviews with our mission president this past week. They went really well. We are hoping that we stay together and President Colton says that it may happen. Hopefully it will.

Things are going pretty good here. We are now teaching a few people. We have a lesson tonight with a lady that seems really positive. She is from Brazil and was taught a bit down there. She has a friend in Utah that referred her to us. We are excited to start teaching her.

Than we have another lady that we got through a media referral. She ordered a Book of Mormon and a DVD. We dropped those by and she is way interested in learning more. The only problem is she doesn't have a car and she lives quite ways from the church. But we are going to start teaching her sometime this week.

And that's about what is going on here. I hope everything back there is going great. I'd love to hear from everyone. Have a great week!

IT SNOWED!!!!!

Yes you read that right. It snowed in Florida. The first time since '76! And I was able to experince it! It was amazing. We had heard that there was a chance of snow so we were looking all day for it. When it finally happened, we were at a members house having lunch. We were constantly looking outside to see if the weather was changing. Then we saw white coming down. We just about jumped up and ran outside. But we stayed in at the table to be polite. The members noticed and just laughed as they said, 'You can go.' And immediatly we were out the door. It was awesome. You may be able to sence some excitment in my voice on the video.

It was freaking awesome!

Other then that, this week was a pretty decent week. I was on exchanges in Lake Wales from Monday until Wednesday, which was zone conference. Zone conference was pretty good. Kind of the usual thing. The 2nd half of zone conference is always my favorite. President Colton usually talks a bit and so does Sister Colton. Then they have a testimony meeting. And that is always really good. I enjoyed it.

This Sunday, we actually had some people come to our Sunday night lessons we are having. It was our Ward mission leader and our assistant Ward mission leader. Then the Elder's quorum president showed up too. But it was still a good discussion that we had. We are going to continue to announce it and invite as many people as we can.

It's gettin' cold here...

This week was another average week. Just trying to find people to teach. It's still going kind of rough. We were called the other day from a member in California to give someone a blessing. It was kind of interesting. She spoke Haitien and very little English. But it worked out. As we were leaving some other people came in and were very confused at seeing us. We explained what we had done and such, but not sure how much they understood. So we called the guy in Cali back and had him call them and explain everything. None of the people were members including the lady we gave the blessing too.

We are starting to do the missionary lessons every Sunday night at our church for anyone that wants to come. We have announced it the past 2 weeks in Sacrament meeting and also in Priesthood. But then nobody came last night. But it's ok. We were, in a way, expecting there not to be a whole lot of people the first week. But we are going to be doing it every week. So we are expecting it to pick up quite a bit.

It has been pretty cold out here the past few weeks. Yesterday we got in the car to go to church and it said it was 36 degrees! I thought I was in Florida! Oh well. I enjoyed it. Reminded my of home. Everyone else here was freezing their butts off though. I thought it was quite funny.

Christmas!

Christmas was great! I was able to talk to the fam for a while and loved every minute of it! We had 3 meals that day. It was pretty tough, but we made it through all the food. :) Our first one was at a members house who had just got out of the hospital. It was really fun. The family is really nice and really enjoys having us over. After that, we went straight to the church to eat with the spanish Sisters and our Zone Leaders. That was pretty fun. Then we watched the new 'Night at the Museum' movie. I enjoyed it. I'd reccomend it if you haven't already seen it. Then we went right to another members house for some more food. We had eaten at there house the night before as well. The food was great and after we played Disney's Scene It. It was a lot of fun.

Now, before Christmas, on either Wednesday or Thursday, we went with the spanish sisters to an investigators house to eat. It is known as 'La Casa.' And apparently there is always something interesting that happens there. But when we went, it was just a fairly normal visit. Except that I couldn't understand most of the conversation as it was in spanish. But then they brought out the food. It looked kinda strange so we asked what it was. They said it was beef. Then they added a spanish word, which being translated means tounge... So we were able to eat cow tounge the other day. Not too bad if mixed with rice and put on a tortilla. But it does have a pretty strange texture. But all in all, it wasn't too bad. I'd eat it again as long it was cooked well.

Yesterday, at church, a guy named Bryan Levi came for the first time to see what it was like. He has been talking with missionaries in Salt Lake for a while. He said the he grew up in a baptist home and only heard bad things about the church, but has seen members and they always seem to be happy. So he diecided to come and check it out for himself. We gave him a church tour before church and he liked it. Then in our gospel principles class they taught the plan of salvation. Which he really liked and said it answered a lot of his questions. Then in priesthood there wasn't really a lesson planned so we just talked. It ended up being him asking us questions and everyone answering the best they could. It was really cool and the Spirit was really strong. He said he really enjoyed it and looked forward to our next meeting. We set up a lesson with him then he left.

Then later that day, he gives us a call and said that he is not ready for this big of a life change right now and for us not to come by or to call him again. We were extremely bummed after this. We aren't sure what happened. But we are praying for him and asking the Lord to try to help him remember what he felt at church and all the things he said.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Y'all!

This going to be a short one. Just letting everyone know I am getting transfered tomorrow up to Haines City. And I will be serving with Elder Watson. I am really excited. Christmas is going to be awesome and I am way stoked to talk to the fam!

Baptism!

Sorry about last week. We weren't able to get to the library at all. It was a pretty interesting week. We were on exchanges for a good portion.

But last week we did have the baptism of Debbie. It was really good. There were a lot of people there. I was really impressed. There were almost more people there then usually at church. It was great. We are planning on teaching her a bit more, but she was sick all of last week, so we are still working on that.

We had our Christmas Zone Conference this past Tuesday. I really enjoyed it. A lot of my mission friends were there and it was great to see them. Quite a few of them will be the last time until I get home because they are going to be headed home after this transfer. But it was a great conference.

Yesterday for p-day, we went to the stake presidents house. He used to work for UPS and was really high up in the company. So his house is huge! But they had the whole zone over and fed us really good food. They have a pool table, ping pong table, air hockey, darts, and even a poker table. We had a lot of fun. And we were able to get on his yacht and look around. Couldn't go for a ride, but that's fine.

This is the view from his backyard. Pretty awesome!

Transfers are coming up next week. Right before Christmas. I am expecting to be gone. But I am fine with that. We find out on Saturday what is happening for sure. Should be interesting.

Thanksgiving!

So this week was pretty good. We were able to teach Debbie a few times. She is still ready to be baptized on the 5th. We are excited for that. We taught her yesterday morning and set up her baptismal program. She seems pretty excited for it.

We were able to talk to Sarah on Sunday a little. We had a branch social after church and she wanted to sit next to us. It was fun. Kids are always interesting. We have her reading the kids Book of Mormon Stories book and she is also reading the Book of Mormon. And she is enjoying it. But things are going to be a little slow still, as we can only see her on Sundays.

This Thanksgiving was probably one of my favorites. We were invited down to a member in North Port. That is the Sister's area. So we were with them all day. We had a lot of fun. We had 1 lunch and visited a few different members. We even had a fire at one. That was cool. We were able to watch the new Ice Age movie. And also we watched a movie called Taken. That was a really good one. I would reccomend that if you haven't seen it yet. But we had a tomn of fun all day. It was great. And, of course, we were able to watch a little football. Good times!

Adn that is about all that I've got for this week.