Christmas Eve

Well, not a whole lot happened this week.  Our shower broke so we had to go to a members home for a couple of days until that got fixed but now our pink shower is up and running again!  But besides that we wen't to Don's house last night for a Christmas party.  Don is some one we are teaching right now.  He is a super nice older guy and he had a bunch of people at his house so we had a bunch of people to talk to and we didn't have to go out in the cold!  We were super surprised though when he started bringing out gifts for every one.  He even got us something.  I got a giant container of popcorn and E. wise got a bunch of pretzels.  We also got 2 dinner appointments out of the deal, with non Members!

We did some service this week.  We helped a friend of ours named Jim get all of his wood down into his basement so he could heat his house.  Jim is the funniest guy you will ever meet and he is an expert in redneck science.  To move one of his trailers he put a hole in his bobcats lifting forks about an inch wide then drilled a hole in the trailers receiving hitch then put a 3/4 inch bolt with washers and nuts through both of those and called it good.  Look at the pictures for a more detailed description but it was pretty creative.  I just wanna know how he drilled the holes in every thing because they were giant for one and they were through supper thick metal but when there is a will their is a way!

One more thing on service.  I have really grown a testimony of service out here.  there are times when I have felt like people have been taking advantage of our kindness but 99% of the time it has gotten us in doors being able to teach people.  Service can soften the hardest of hearts!

And last fun story, we were up North in rose city and we had 10 minutes until a member was going to come and pick us up and I saw a trading post so we went in and looked around.  They had furs from every animal you could think of, knives, air rifles, fishing lures, and anything else you could think of.  But behind the counter there was a raccoon skin coat and E. Wise asked if he could put it on.  My jaw Dropped because the price tag on that coat was 950 bones!  After we gave the store clerks some light the world cards and headed back to the car I asked E. Wise, "did you see the price tag on that coat?"  He said no so I told him it was 950 bucks and he said I'm sure glad I didn't rip that thing! 

One Week Before Christmas!

It was a solid week.  Last p-day after we got home from proselyting I was bored so I grabbed my screwdriver set and took apart my electric blanket controller to see what was inside.  E. Wise wanted to know if it still worked all taken apart so I plugged it in and turned it on.  I don't know what I touched on the circuit board but owww did it shock me and let me know it was there.  After that I unplugged it and put it back together but I'm proud to say that it still works!

We had a multi-Zone conference this week.  We had 4 different zones there.  It was really cool to see just how big the Michigan Lansing Mission really is.  There were 94 missionaries there and that was only about half of them but we learned a lot.  I loved what our mission president said about traditions.  They will either save you or they will damn you.  He went on to talk about the traditions of praying every night personally and even someday with our family.  Basically what he was saying is make traditions that will make it easier to live the gospel!

We picked up a new investigator this week down in Standish.  We have been running out of things to do here in West Branch so we have been making the half hour drive to Standish to do some stop byes and door knocking.  We knocked into some really cool new people that haven't been door knocked before so we're hoping to pick up a couple of new people to teach this week!

Hot Chocolate at the Light Parade

On Saturday we had a last minute idea to set up a table and give out hot Chocolate at the light parade here in West Branch.   I thought an hour or two would be good to prepare, but nope we spent all day getting ready.   It is amazing how hard it is to find supplies as missionary's, but we managed to find a table, a cooler, cups, and coco mix.  To make the hot coco we boiled about 3 gallons of water then mixed that with 1 gallon of warm water.  We thought one giant container of mix would do it.  Nope we ended up having to go to Walmart and buy some more.  It ended up taking 2 and a half containers before we had enough!  We headed over at 6:15 to setup every thing and we ended up being out there until 8:30.  It was freezing.  It was 19 degrees out that night and I wore exactly what I usually wear out door knocking, but when you're just standing there you get way colder.  By the end of the night we had frost on the table and the spilled hot coco was frozen.  All that being said, we got to talk to a lot of people and they came to us!

Last p-day we weren't really sure what we wanted to do so we headed back to the apartment and I found some ping pong balls.  We were looking for ping pong paddles but we couldn't find any.  We were about to go to Walmart then E. Wise got an amazing idea, just use some small frying pans.  So we played a couple of rounds of sting ping using frying pans.  I can only imaging what the neighbors were thinking when they saw us running around the apartment with a frying pan in our hands and ping pong balls flying every where!

It's Christmas Time

This Sunday we had an activity where we invited everyone we could think of to watch the First Presidency Christmas devotional at the church and enjoy hot cocoa and cookies!  I was in charge of setting up the stream!  So we showed up an hour early to get the water hot and set up the t.v.   We ended up only getting 2 or 3 families there but we got a nonmember who came with a member friend.  Goldmine!!  We talked to him before the devotional and he said he had a lot of questions about our church and he said he didn't understand why there were so many churches.  He said he thought there should just be one true church.  Me and Elder Wise were smiling from ear to ear saying ya, we know one! 

After that, we watched the devotional and I set up the video so that is was coming through our Roku box so we could get HD video and it worked great up until halfway through president Nelson’s talk when the internet went down.  So with my heart pounding, I switched over to the crummy satellite audio/visual but because of that everyone in the branch thinks I'm a miracle worker when it comes to technology.  So that makes things interesting.  But the nonmember said that it [devotional] answered a lot of his questions and he wanted to meet with us.  So me and Elder wise were pretty stoked about that!

On Friday we went to the Atchison’s home for dinner.  After doing some stop byes we went to their house and oh my gosh they had a dog that was just like my dog Sadie from home.  Personality was the same,  same size, and clean.  The only difference was the color of her fur.  I made sure to get some doggy hugs and kisses in before we left.  Sister Atchison also made the best dinner I've had since being out.  She asked on Sunday what food I missed from home and I said, Mexican, and she went all out and it was all homemade it was amazing!

I don't know how to explain this but here in Michigan it will be pitch black out at 8 and the clouds will be glowing in 360 degrees and keep in mind the closest big city is Saginaw 50 miles away I couldn't get a picture of it but just believe me!