SANTA!!

December 7, 2015

Man this has been a week let me tell ya! So much went on in the later
half of the week, I'm surprised we could fit it all in, so as you do
every week, buckle up and get ready for a good read!

Tuesday was pretty slow, but we stopped by a former investigators
house and he opened the door and said "come on in!" we pretty much
just got a feel for where he was at with the church and he said he
just can't get over having another book, but that we can come back and
give him our "presentation" so why not? Anyways he was extremely
friendly and had all these gnarly tats and I guess he's been to jail
to so after he found Jesus, he turned his life around! Then we just
happened to be driving by a members house and we saw him walking out
with a cig in his mouth so that was pretty rad hahaha! We pretty much
walked around the rest of the day looking for Potentials/Less Actives.
We talked to this way cool guy named Pete who said he met missionaries
before in the last place he lived in, but now a days who hasn't met
the missionaries? It was pouring rain so I was just soaked all day,
but eh who cares! We had a lesson with Casper and it didn't go too
well because first of all it was on the Law of Chastity and how do you
teach the Law of Chastity to a 9 year old? Anyways there was a few
other things we needed to go over with him and I just didn't feel like
he was understanding it so I got a little bummed out that we may need
to push back him baptismal date.

Wednesday we met up with Bro Fegely, our Branch Mission leader and
went to visit a bunch of less actives. Some of them are part member
families who we will hopefully be teaching their non member part of
the family soon! We dropped by the members house who had the cig in
his mouth Tuesday to bring back some containers and he pretty much
said that his son had been stressing him out and his insomnia was
driving him crazy to where he just got up in the middle of the night
to buy a pack of cigarettes, but he kicked his son out and is back on
meds for insomnia and stuff, so I feel like we dodged a Word of Wisdom
bullet right there! We met this super nice guy walking on the street
who has had a couple brain surgeries. He wasn't too interested in our
message because he was catholic, but he felt we were there for some
reason because he was going in for another brain surgery the next day.
So he took some pamphlets and told us to say a prayer for him. We also
met this guy named Mike who was just sittin on his porch smoking and
said he's studied every religion and we could come back to see him. We
went to have dinner with Tom and Melanie and while we were there we
told them about our branch christmas party and how there was going to
be a Santa Claus and Tom looked and me and said "you really messed
up!" and pointed at his beard. So the rest of the time I was just
trying to persuade him to be Santa at our party and he told me he'd
give us the answer tomorrow.

Thursday we had our Zone Training which was all about our area books
so I won't bore y'all with that. Afterwards we did exchanges so Elder
Martinez came to Lehighton with me, but first we had to go get chinese
buffet with our ZL's Elder Clark and Fernandes. It's tradition! After
lunch we had a lesson with Casper on baptism and then Elder Martinez
interviewed him for baptism. I was a little nervous honestly, but
Elder Martinez pried the answers out of Casper and he "passed" so to
speak! We went to have a lesson with the "ice cream miracle" man Jon.
We were teaching the word of wisdom and told us he drinks coffee. In a
nutshell Elder Martinez was like "Well I hear you want to get baptized
and you can't do that if you drink coffee" and Jon was like "okay I'll
quit!" We the met with said Mike who smoked on his porch. He likes to
talk so we pretty much just listened to him most the time to get a
feel for him. We stopped by Jeff's, an exchange tradition and he gave
me my first Hanukkah present early, which was a flute so I've been
jammin on that lately! Then last we stopped by Tom's to get the answer
on the Santa thing! He said he would be fine to do it, we just have to
get the suit for him before the party! Man no one except maybe my last
companion could understand how excited I was for that!

Friday we exchanged back and we ended up getting lost in Stroudsburg
which was pretty cool! Pretty much drove back and did some service at
the Roeselers, and yes dad I mowed his lawn and that thing is biiig!
Then we weekly planned.

Saturday was the bomb! We started by going to the Keller's to do some
service for them and they fed us some pizza. We went to the
Fitzsimmons to pick up the Santa suit for Tom. Later that day we had a
lesson with smoker Mike, but he really isn't that interested, just
being kind by letting us come over so who knows how much we will do
there. The best part was having Tom be our Santa! Technically I'm the
first missionary to get Tom to the church building in all 3 years he's
known us so that's rad! The party was super fun and we had a bunch of
nonmembers there, definitely a success!

Sunday we had regular old church, but the best part was right after we
had a baptism for Casper! It was way cool being able to finally
baptize the kid after teaching him for 3 months! I don't know if he
really understands much of what happened, but he seemed so happy
after. We finished the day by stopping at the Bakers and they randomly
fed us, then Jeff's for the first day of Hanukkah, the Roeselers for a
real dinner, then last the Gruber's! Bro Gruber plays the guitar so we
got that bro connection!

Today Bro Gruber called us over and fed us lunch and me and him jammed
together for a while. Now we are just kickin it with our zone leaders
so I'm gonna end this letter. I hope y'all have a great week and I
hope to hear from you soon! Love you guys!