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.

Yup...

So things are still going well. This week was pretty good. We were able to teach Debbie a few times. She is very ready to be baptized. She just needs to quit smoking. But she is well on her way. We have changed her date until the 5th of December. With the week being Thanksgiving, she is really busy and we are not going to be able to teach her as much as we would like. And that is another reason we moved her baptismal date back a week. But we are excited.

We had Stake conference this week. So we weren't able to teach Sarah. We talked with her grandma a bit through out the week. But things are still at the point of us teaching her at church. So hopefully we will be able do that next week.

Adn that is what we have going on for now. We are still trying to find more people to teach. Not getting much. But trying.

Alive and kicking!

The work is still going about the same. We were able to teach Debby again. We focused on the word of wisdom. She smokes and that is the only thing really in the way right now. She is trying to quit though. But things are still going good with her.

We were able to start teaching Sarah, the 8 year old girl, on Sunday. She is really smart and already knows quite a bit about the gospel. Right now, we can only teach her on Sundays at church because of some things at home. But her grandma is trying to work things out. But she is still excited and wants to get baptized.

Yesterday we went fishing again and some of us actually caught some good sized fish. We also played a little football and soccer. It was fun.

Transfers...

So this week was the last week of the transfer. So that means this was is transfers and today is Transfer day. Yippee...? What happened for transfers is definitely not what we were expecting to happen. President Colton talked with both of us at interviews about bringing in a spanish missionary and we were pretty sure that that was what was going to happen this transfer. But, instead, Elder Schramm and I are still together and are now in a tripanionship with Elder Zahl. So this next transfer is going to be interesting. And our apartment is going to be fairly full. But I am still excited for this transfer.

The work is moving along well. We were able to teach Debbie a few times this week. And are going to be teaching her again on Thursday. She has a baptismal date for the 28th. We are excited for that. She knows a lot of people in the Branch so she has a lot of support.

We tried to teach the 8 year old girl, Sarah, but her grandmother was busy so we had to keep rescheduling. We have some things for this week and hopefully they will work out.

Halloween!

As I mentioned last week, we had interviews with President Colton. Those went pretty good. I am now a 2 time winner of the shiniest shoes! Last transfer I won a thing of spray hand sanitizer and this time I won a can of Chunky soup! Which was much needed because Elder Schramm and I were running low on food. Every transfer at interviews, Sister Colton always makes home made bread for us. Which is amazing! But this time, with it being pumpkin season, she also brought home made pumpkin bread! It was awesome!

After interviews, I went up to the Sebring area with Elder Zahl. That was pretty fun. Every week they have a volleyball night and I was able to be there for it! It was a lot of fun. Then, my last night there, they had there trunk-or-treat. Which was also pretty fun. We got lots of candy.

Then we switched back on Thursday. That day, a member took Elder Schramm and I out to eat. The place we went to served gator meat! So of course we had to get some of that. It was pretty good. Not the cheapest, obviously, but I would for sure have it again.

While I was on exchanges, Elder Schramm and Elder Reed set a baptismal date with an invexstigator. We are pretty excited. She came to our trunk-or-treat on Friday. She seems really excited and she already knows a good chunk of the people in the branch. We are going to be teaching her again on Wednesday.

The trunk-or-treat we had was pretty fun. For being in a small branch, there weren't a whole tom of people there, but we still had fun. Near the end of the night, we had a donought on a string eating contest. And of course, the missionaries have to participate. The out come was, I got 3rd place. But had I gone against the person who got 2nd during the 'tournament' I would have probably been 2nd. Oh well. It was still fun.

Today, we went to a members house who has a lot of WWII things such as jeeps, tanks, planes and such. He gets them and restores them. It was really cool. He also has a canon that he let us fire off. It was cool. Here are a few of the pics I took.







We also got to ride around in that jeep.

The canon!