January 3rd 2017

Haciendos my familia and also mi friends! Happy New Year!

Things have finally calmed down a bit, and I can write a decent email. This was an eventful week! We tracted and a bunch of stuff in the rain, I went on exchange with the zone leaders and we had a blast, you know, just missionary stuff. I'll give a few highlights.

We were invited to a wedding, it was ok, there were a few nonmembers and stuff, we ate some enormous burritos, seriously, our czech friend made two for each of us and they were the size of cafe rio burritos. We talked with a man named Mims about math and religion in a McDonalds for like 45 minutes. We also had a lesson with a less active person in our ward who likes being baptized. It turns out that she has joined about 5 other churches, and she still likes to go to our temples and do baptisms there. She also sees upwards of 10 Jesus's wherever she goes. Let's just say we probably won't go back for a long while, and I don't think she's really accountable for her actions. Just an average day here in Shallowford!

We met a guy named Ernie, and he's awesome. He can speak in tongues, and after we said the opening prayer, he demonstrated this gift of the spirit. It sounded kind of like Italian, but it wasn't, and then we asked for an interpretation of said tongues, and he had to pray for it. It turned out to be a blessing for us in our missionary efforts from the Holy Spirit! 

On New Year's Eve we ate with some members who have a tradition of smashing a gingerbread house with the missionaries. I have pictures, it was pretty funny. New Year's Day was pretty average, and yesterday we had a meeting and we ate at a place called cook out. 

This week we planned out our new ward mission plan. It was largely based on two talks from General conference this year, mostly Elder Oaks' talk. I think I've invited you to read it before, so I'll invite you to read it again. Basically the whole idea is that we need to look at success in missionary work not as results but more as if we followed the spirit. Results are out of our control because we're not perfect and because of agency, but success comes from the invitation. There's a simple 1 2 3 in his talk about how to be successful, and it's true for all missionaries.