I don't delight in fatness, Billiards, Excuse me Mrs. But have you ever wondere

Welp another week has come and gone just like that and now we begin week three of this short transfer :P. As of the moment we have a man in our apartment fixing the sink and toilet which probably should have been called in about a month ago but as procrastinators we prefer to unite ourselves later... Preferably after lunch. Anyways I'll move from there and get on with the week. So I don't know what was up with this past week but for four days straight we were fed pizza by members and non members and I can honestly say that I'm starting to hit that old college tiredness of pizza :P, so much of it and it's really fatty. Elder Litton says I watch my figure to much but hey I don't wanna get that flat tire belly that I see a lot of Elders fashioning these days :3. Gotta get a scale in here. Ok I'll really get to it this time. So on Monday night we were supposed to have a meal and lesson with Nancy and Gil but Gil forgot so we didn't end up going there. Well we found out an hour later from a call by our Ward mission leader that we were supposed to be having dinner with him and his family which the sisters hadn't told us about, Bingo. So we had white chili with rolls which was really good and had a good time with them. It's nice to actually be meeting with members in this Ward. The Peterson family is really cool, he served his mission in Ogden which covers Logan so we talked about that and a show we both liked called cowboy bebop. They have three kids that are just funny as heck. They didn't think that chili was good for their body machine :3. Tuesday we had weekly planning but we saw Brandon before doing so and he was awesome as always. Later that night we had dinner with the Wasco's as usual and it went well. One thing that I've noticed with less active and investigator meals is that I do most of the talking which is a bit unusual for me but its alright it's something I need to do more of. We had missionary correlation that night to which is different since it's usually on a Wednesday but we had an elders quorum activity that night. Litton and I actually ended up going to that and it was a lot of fun. We played Billiards and I beat the best guy there :D. Would have won the second game too had I not scratched when shooting the eight ball >:). Thursday morning started off the day to be very strange. So we were standing outside of a bus stop trying to figure out where to go when a lady passed us to which we greeted and then she went on. Well we ended up taking the same route as her and passing her again Litton took the opportunity to ask her if she new where babies came from... :3. She was nine months pregnant and answered uh I think I know where XD. Started off extremely awkward, I'm walking just ahead trying not to bust up laughing but Litton saved himself with the P.o.S. And she said we could come back if she wasn't in labor. Ended up being just that but afterwards talking with him he said that it hadn't sounded so weird in his head ;). So skipping to Saturday we were invited by Nancy to come to her nieces birthday party to pick up a plate of food. We get in there and the row home is just packed with kids and adults with really loud music. It was a Frozen themed party and we get in and I talk with Gil quite a bit but when I stop I'm just hearing the most profane music and Litton is white as a ghost since he wasn't talking so much so I finished my plate and got us out of there. That was a bait and switch kids party if I had ever been to one lol. Last but not least we come to Sunday. Let the audience know that there are some topics you talk about and many that you don't within the walls of church. Combined third hour is not the time to have an open discussion about people's thoughts on Homosexuality >.<. It started off with a good message from bishop but he opened it up to discussion which went south within two comments for the rest of the time. Any investigator in there would have thought the church was in favor with the LGBT group with how some of the members were in there.... On our way home though Litton suddenly mumbles something and turns around and I go whattt? He said gotta go back, so we walked a block and he knocked a door to which he just went right into our message and asked for a time we could come back and the lady said yes. Her names Dawn and we will be seeing her on Wednesday... I wanna do something like that!!! Later that night we got fed twice :P and that about wraps up this week.

Litton, tired week, first exchange experience, progress?

Well, Elder Barker and I had one last hoorah Monday night at the Giordano home. They had invited us over for their family home evening where we had a good time and for the first time the kids there weren't just completely nuts. We had cheese steaks, played a bunch of different card games, and watched a video of their boa constrictor taking out a rat which was pretty cool to watch if I do say so myself :3. Now the events of Tuesday at transfers brought me my new companion Elder Litton. Good guy who's had a lot of success on the mission. Comes from Southern California as well, which unfortunately breaks my chain of having companions from a different state, but that's alright I guess. The transfer also brought a huge change to the zone. We went from dead and dying to a lot of goldens as well as middle aged missionaries..... Which I guess now includes myself :3? Whatever it's a strange place now but still good. So with the arrival of Litton I had him meet everybody that I could on the first day and we set up a lot of appointments that we were super excited for.... And then they all fell through :P. It was a very stressful week with how everything ended up being, but Elder Litton and myself did a lot of walking with not to much success. Trooped through it though. And with all of the non occur in events I digress to Friday. So Elder Sutton received a Golden by the name of Elder Christensen. From Draper, just graduated and is an eighteen year old who just loves sports. So this is my second transfer not being the youngest in the district and I was Elder Christensen's first exchange on the mission which I was super excited for. Well things fell through again and being a golden in a very successful area at the moment he slightly insulted me asking if we had actually done any planning ):/.... Well I brushed it off and just kept going with what we had. He hasn't been out tracting yet and wants the experience so I knock on the first door and get turned down to which elder Christensen says that I need to be more bold. So I said you can have the next door then (meanwhile my thought process I'm making sure I don't end up being that missionary who's like watch this guy get thrown down). Good thing to cause though the person didn't want to talk with us about the gospel we talked with them a bit on the stoop so moral of the story is I didn't get duped :3. Also he didn't wanna tract anymore and preferred to street contact. We were able to have a little bit of success that night though with Nancy and Gil which was very relieving. Watched the restoration video and just had a good talk with them. Tonight we will be watching the finding faith in Christ video which I've never seen so we will see how this goes. Saturday we started off with football like usual and goodness it was a blast. I'm pretty sure after the awesome plays I made I'll move up a little in the rankings ;). I got a good hand for catching flags it seems. However for so much fun and excitement elder Litton and myself are still recovering from football and Saturdays events XP. We ended up walking pretty much for the next three to four hours trying to make it to the church since the subway was broken and the buses were to dang cramped to even attempt to get on with a stupid side bag :P. My side bag is a fricken tank! Anyways we get one stop away from the church when the Girodano's sent us a text that they wanted us over for dinner.... Oh no but yet Awesome! I was very happy with how things ended. Most of the kids were gone for the time that we were here and the lesson we directed towards their one boy Marshall was a complete fail since he had the attention span of a nat. But Susan said that she wants to re go through all of the lesson with her and the boys so that he boys can begin to choose ya know? She will totally be baptized just need to get her husband resolved and we be good for the dunking. And that about wraps up the events of this past week.

Football

Last week playing football before half of these guys ship out tomorrow. Rained like heck but it was a good time, not to sure what my hand signal was....

This is why we can't have nice things, visit round up, ready for some consistency...

Welp another week come and gone, ten months out and what do you know Christmas is around the corner with thanksgiving being left behind :3... Like myself. So I'm trying to figure out what to tell ya about as I remember the important things that ended up happening. So first off in news that I'm pretty bumbed about is not just my mission but every mission that has Facebook, I am no longer allowed to be friends with family back home unless I am actively teaching someone with you guys :(. Dang negative ten percent be punishing the rest of us again, ya know what I mean? This is why we can't have nice things and why we have that tiny little white book of doom :/. We also received some more mission rules which have become a bugger but ya can't do anything about it so ya, I'm done with my rant. So South Philly had the best district ever but here we had the best zone of all time. Unfortunately 2/3rds of the zone dies tomorrow which will be the long famine for myself of everyone I know will be leaving :(. Bad enough as it is Elder Barker got the call that he will be leaving tomorrow for his new area so we will see what I end up getting from the roulette board of this mission. This has been my favorite companionship since Elder Whitaker so maybe I'll get to serve with him again somewhere down the line but at the moment I'm just ready for some consistency to happen around here but things need to be as they are I guess. So on Saturday we did something pretty cool. We went and did the Philly 5k heart walk since we were asked by President to do so, I guess. There were a ton of people down at the stadiums where it took place and though I wasn't able to talk with anyone, it was different and was a good experience. With elder Barker leaving we went and did all of our roundups this weekend and we got a few more today. On Saturday we went to Mike and Dana's where we had a good time. Played chess for my first time on the mission there and though I got so close I messed up right at the end and wasn't able to recover :P. Mike and Danan are awesome and Mike will be reactivated here real soon we hope. Later that night we met with Annie who will be reactivated here soon too. Though we weren't able to have a lesson with Annie we were able to do so with her sister Tracie, who is less active as well. Her father just died the day before, so she was going through a really rough spot. We did the plan of salvation which helped her out a lot! She was feeling a lot better at the very end and we were able to have a great night with the rest of them once they got back. Yesterday we had the Wasco's for dinner with the other sisters and elders which was weird since I haven't had a party meal in a long while, but it was nice to be able to do so since it changed things up. Afterwards we had Mike and Dana again which was good though his ex wife showed up and just gossiped and took up a greater part of our time and it was really annoying :P. Read the Book of Mormon like usual and got out. That's about it for now. Tonight we will be eating cheese steaks at the Giordano's which will be good since she is an amazing cook.

We actually met members, Halloween flop, old neighbors with potential

So now that I have come to write my weekly email I can't quite remember everything that happened this past week more than likely do to the wonderful weather that quickly and unexpectedly changed without consent to a drab wet day that just never seemed to end but that's alright cause we had lessons..... Writing without punctuation can be fun :3. So anyways ya this is week six so we will see what will be going on with this upcoming transfer. Hope to stay with Barker but as I recall that hasn't done me to well in that field so I'll just leave it there :P. However one thing that changed this past week is that we actually ate and met with a member, my goodness isn't that crazy!? I know right? Two families to be exact... And they have gone back to just feeding sisters :P. No comment. So onward with our story of the week. We were able to meet with Brandon three times this week which was awesome. Just over all he is awesome since he always wants to meet and willing to go out and teach when college isn't in the way. Also he got his girlfriend interested so maybe we can work with her on Skype :D. Also he worked at a pretzel factory for about four years so everyone knows him there and gets free soft pretzels so he took us and we were given about fifteen haha. Let's say I could only eat two cause those suckers are heavy! The same night that we got pretzels we went and saw elder Barkers old neighbor Nancy and her kids and we picked them up as investigators along with a friend named Gil who is living with them :D. Super cool family to which we taught the restoration, which Nancy has heard before but we think that since the missionaries have moved she misses that feeling they brought since they were over there a lot. Now for the two short days. Thursday not to much success and wanting us to be "time effective missionaries" we had to plan that night which we did. Halloween was a slight bit of a flop though :/. Went and bought candy for kids and can ya guess what, not a single one of those little guys came out to get their three musketeers :/. So now we are left with them to our own devices which isn't good........... It was an alright night. Nothing special though which was a bit disappointing but better luck next year I guess, maybe board games will be legalized by then but we will see. Saturday is where things got super cold and wet over night yuck! But rain, shine, snow, or Ebola we go out and play football and man did we get soaked! Man though we froze it was pretty good, when we showed up to our lunch appointment though we had to have our jackets thrown into the dryer as we ate but the rest of ourselves just had to endure :3. The rest of the day went pretty well though since we had multiple appointments that night which kept us out of the cold rain. The last thing I wanna write about is that we had an awesome find from our potentials list yesterday. Her name is Denise and we talked to her through the screen door. We were just going to set up a return appointment since the wind was howling and it was super cold but she ended up talking with us more since she is a bit lonely and so we had a lesson through the door :).