Christmas Conference, Christmas, Communications and Connections Online, Service!!!

Well this will be an interesting letter since I finally got to see all of your wonderful faces this past week and tell ya stories of hinder and yawn ;). But I'll reiterate just a few just in case I missed anything. So at the Christmas conference we received a nice little message from both President and Sister Anderson that were short sweet and to the point before we went and played Preach My Gospel Jeopardy. It was fun but we made Sister Anderson cry cause I guess we just got to competitive..... Sigh l:/. To which we then watched seventeen miracles which was really good. The man known as Brother Albert if y'all remember him is my favorite out of them all. That movie sets a mood that very few can get you to feel. We then had our talent show which I very much enjoyed and I can't wait to send you videos of my favorite ones. I was second to last and President complimented my presentation which I was very happy and relieved about since I was bit worried about it but the worrying was for naught. Then we had FLIPPING AMAZING CHRISTMAS!!! And it was gone in a blink of an eye but I was super excited to talk with y'all and the opportunity to see other familiar faces. Just got an email from Kali saying she should be on her way out too :). So I'm glad to see that y'all made it home safely and I hope that each one of you had a good Christmas. I've already put the banjo book to work which has been a lot of fun, though I do feel that these types of string instruments are really hard to play, my fingers like to hit other strings :3. The card game has been fun too, now that we have a few missionaries who now know how to play. We later went to Annie's house which was fun but weird since the sisters were there too. Just adds a strange setting that I'm not to entirely used to but oh well. Friday we had district meeting since Christmas was occupied and it was good. Litton had me help him build a small nativity for it which was nice and we discussed the birth of Jesus Christ. What really stood out Friday though is that we were able to spend some time with Bishop and his family. We have been trying to get a better relationship with Ward council members since it just doesn't seem that they trust us, but we had a really good time with him. We walked through Love Park with all the vendors, watched two Christmas shows, walked through a Maceys Dickens Christmas Carol village and I almost had the opportunity to beat and to teach someone on a chess board :3. It was a really good night and one that we need for us and Bishop. Saturday we helped the Frankford Elders with a service project in our area which was nuts. Cleaned out a side alley and it was just gross! Looks so much better now though it's going to need a lot more work with heavy machinery but it's the first service I've been able to do since reaching this area so I'm pretty dang happy for that reason :). And that about wraps up this past week. I received hymns the day before Sunday and miraculously I was able to play them mostly proficiently. I'm pretty sure that Gods back hurts a lot of the time cause he really carries this team ;)

Caroling on Monday

Long week, Case of the Long Lost Letter, Cookie Day, Messiah

So for the first time in a really long time I have very very little to write about for this past week. We had two lessons planed, for all but two days this past week and every single one of them fell through so Elder Litton and myself were out and about trying to find most days with no success (:P. So ya last week was really ruff. The only lesson that we were able to manage was on facebook. On our spare time this week during lunches and stuff Elder Litton was teaching me a bit of sign language that he knows which has been really fun since I actually understand it unlike Spanish and what not. I guess that it is because it is a visual language but as of the moment I know the whole alphabet (besides x :P) and a few words but I doubt enough to carry an actual language haha. After a long week, on Saturday we were invited over to Mike and Dannas house for something they called cookie day. There were quite a few people there and it was a fun time. Mostly we just hung out in the kitchen talking with Danna and helped with the cookies since the kids were watching movies in the other room which we try our best to avoid ;). Received a whole box of cookies... Yay me :P! :3 Yesterday church went like usual. The spanish elders sent me the hymns late, then they changed one while there, I played silent night on the piano after a five minute request to do so before the meeting which didn't turn out to bad but the others I mostly just ended up playing the top hand since I was super stressed and under prepared. Later last night though I went and watched Elder Litton perform in the messiah which he has been doing for the past three weeks. It was a stake activity and it was really cool to go and see. I saw Brother Livigni for the first time since I left south Philly and watched him sing marvelously. Got video of parts of this so I got some good singing to send your way ;). That about wraps up this week though... I'm really worried for my return email this time from President. Last time I was this low with lessons I was with a trunky companion and I got the chewing out so I guess we will see how this goes over :/. Welp tis the season to be festive and I hope that y'all have a fun Christmas time with family.

Ruff to stuff, not to much, Seeley, transfer calls, baptismal tally?, Sisters

So I'm a very happy to say that I will not be picked up and moved this transfer or at least I need to make it through tomorrow without receiving a call cause ye changed their minds... Yay me! So I myself and Litton will be serving out a seven week transfer this time since this past one was five so that they could get all the dying missionaries home for Christmas and to save money on tickets.... Next year will be interesting. Anyways I am excited that I will be staying this go around but another interesting thing we have going on is that in a zone of 22 people only two are being transferred which no one saw coming. Well I don't have to many crazy wild things to talk about this past week no sir so I'll cut to the chase that up until about Wednesday we just walked around and tried to find people. Thus I have a very boring title compared to the usual which disappoints me but I'll have to live with it or think of something wittier to put down. So on Wednesday I was on exchanges with Elder Seeley who I have been dying to go on exchanges with all transfer since my companion is the district leader. The day started off pretty sweet since the four of us ordered wings for lunch that were just darn right tasty. Well we got into the exchange pretty quick when we dropped in on Gill looking for Nancy but she was at work. He has been having a lot of struggles with work lately and with the coming Christmas season, which we didn't know until after we showed him the he is the gift video, which helped him to feel a lot better and was very happy that we had stopped by and showed him that video. Lately he has been calling himself a Mormon so the next time we get over there for an actual lesson we have plans to set him with an actual baptismal date ;). We then went to the church where I practiced the organ as usual and face booked but right after we went to Daisy's with Brother Tabour and talked a bit more about the Book of Mormon so that she could have a better understanding of it. I'm really excited for Daisy since she has been doing what we have asked her to do and she accepted a baptismal date on this visit :D! The main thing now is that I want to get a closer relationship with her like our other investigators which just seems to be coming slower than usual which I don't like >:/. Right from their we had some grub and Seeley and I talked. He goes home what now is next transfer but at the time I could tell that he was going through a really ruff time. Super hard worker but I could tell that the end of the line with the possibility of being transferred was something that was really creeping up on him at the time. Luckily though he got to stay which I hope helped him and I'm excited to be serving with him again. Well our missionary meeting that night, to where we give all of our updates and help neededs to our Ward mission leader, went well and I brought up that our mission leaders want us back in Ward council which I've been wanting for awhile since the missionaries and Ward seem to have a distant gap between themselves... Besides the sisters that is but that's a later point :P. I had no support from our district which bugged me but because it was asked to be done thankfully we got in. Now there are some really cool sister missionaries who I've met (most are home now...) but unfortunately I've come down to a dislike for them since members only wanna do things for them leaving us out and a certain sister here seems to always shut things down before they take off before the idea can take off since she doesn't "feel comfortable" about it... :P. Sorry for my rant but I need to get it out, anyways on with our time. Friday to Saturday I was on exchanges with Elder Sutton again which was good right up until the very end. We had a very random appointment at 8 Saturday morning for a guy he had talked to who lived in another wards area but since they couldn't go we ended up going and it was pretty bad. The mans name was John who had very little background in religion let alone only had the belief that there had to be some higher power but rather than just touching on a few things Sutton just plowed through with the restoration as fast as possible so that we could make it to football.... Dang it! He was so confused at the end to :(. I'm a bit worried about his golden/greeny missionary too. Kid has no life experience so he just buys a lot of junk and on his msf he had a dollar left.... He's still got a whole month left what the heck haha. Boy I'm glad I went to college first ;). Football was good but the rest of the day kinda stunk since everything that we had planned fell through. Sunday we had to get up really early to go to a meeting where we discussed the missionary efforts in our Ward and what our plan was going to be for the coming year. It was nice and President Anderson actually came to be apart of it to which was really sweet. He had some really awesome compliments about the missionaries in our Ward which I'm a bit worried about now, haha. Either way though I hope that it helps the Ward to trust us more since bishop was in there too. After church I played the organ again but I was a bit bumbed this time around. Didn't play as well and the third song I was different than the one I was told to practice so a lady from another Ward came in to save the day. Then Litton started doing this head bobbing for me to leave which I didn't understand since I had one more song to play so I asked the lady to do so and found out that Litton just wanted to make some phone calls >.<. Hope I haven't lost my job haha. We went on my first time ever splits yesterday too. I went with a senior couple in our Ward the Syme's to Daisy again which went well. I had to slow down a bit since it was going so fast but the Symes were a great help with Daisy and at the end she asked what she needed to do to be baptized :D! It was pretty sweet. From there Litton went to practice the Messiah while I went with Lundberg our ZL to Mike and Dana's :). Well that about wraps it all up, I need to find a spanish elder to translate a post I found on facebook since I think some of the investigators I worked with back in Seaford with Elder Leavitt got baptized! We will see.

My name is George Nelson! Not Baby Face!, ?!?, Sick as a Dog, Bill and Ricky

So I'm a bit scatter brained at the moment and have forgotten a bit of what I wanted to talk with yall about but either way something or other will be told by this brother to a dad, some sisters and a mother.... Yup one of those days. Anyways to move on with our week and it's delightsome details... Well mostly everything fell through :/. So I'll mostly be cutting to the chaste of the little things that stuck out this past week. And so we cut to Friday while I was on exchanges with Elder Long here in my area. So our exchange started off pretty late compared to how they usually are. We've had a ton of rain this past week and Thursday was no exception except for on that day it was just a lot of mist rain which happens every so often around here. Well I had been getting pretty sick up to this point but as we were sitting waiting for our bus to come we or rather I had a rare and awkward exchange of words. Within five minutes of each other I was hit on twice by two high school girls :P. The first one started off with my eyes and I had no idea what to do so I just changed the topic as quick as I could to then have elder Long come in and help me but while doing so the next girl hit on me and I just gave up by that point and gave her a he is the gift card, haha, shoot that was weird. My exchange went pretty well with Elder long by the fact that we had an awesome miracle happen later that evening. We had just come from Facebook and practicing the piano (was almost invited to play at a Spanish wedding while there 0.o) on our way to an appointment when some guys detained us for a bit, missed our bus and then ended up having to walk a great distance, when a guy we had passed yelled from a block down asking if we were Mormons? His name is Rob and in the past he had dated a mormon who gave him a tripod Book of Mormon and had taken him to church and everything. This being probably five or more years ago picked that back up just a few days before meeting us and had felt the spirit. Not having seen missionaries in years he had to speak to us so thus we did :D. He doesn't live in our area but we got his number and facebook so we will hopefully be able to send him off to the other missionaries. Oh our appointment cancelled right as we were talking with him too :P. Saturday I was feeling better but I pretty much lost my voice entirely as we played football in a progressively worse downpour :P. I was bored this time around since I was sick and couldn't do much so we end that there. We were going to do a back to back exchange but with the little amount of time that we had that day before the ward party we decided against it. So got cleaned up and tried to make a desert for the party which ended up being a disaster that tasted really good but it wasn't ready for the party so we left it at home. I call it brownie monster and will send you the recipe later on. The party was really fun though I'm not to sure if my companion fully enjoyed it. Seemed like a business trip for him as he went this way and that way with objectives I myself wasn't to sure about but oh well. I talked with Brother Moala who used to serve in this mission about my trainer and got some funny stories about them towel boxing haha. Guess my trainer got knocked out pretty good. Sunday I played the organ and this time I did really well which I was happy about since a lot of the spanish elders were complaining that they hadn't gotten one of the sister missionaries to play bah! I wouldn't have it ;). After church we had to rush to a lesson in which we had a couple coming out with us to teach which fell through., but we revived it with another one which went really well so our time was well spent with a lady named Daisy... Or Debbie... Not really sure since she answers to both. After that Litton went on another mini exchange so that he could go to penny pack to practice for Handles Messiah which I may or may not be included on next week we shall see since I didn't have a voice really yesterday. I went with Elder Seeley who started his mission in this area to Mike and Danas for dinner where he just went ham on Dana and why she really hasn't progressed since the time he was here. Unfortunately she dodged everything as usual but it was really cool to watch Seeley go man mode within a lesson. This morning we went and saw Bill and Ricky down in south Philly which was awesome! They are doing alright but I was a bit worried before going down since the missionary I talked to before hand in that area said that they were struggling and not really progressing. The main thing I could tell is that they were just taking up a lot of time by coming by four to five times a week which I myself have never heard of. But they are doing well. Bill quit smoking and is weaning off wih ene ciggarettes and Ricky had her hip surgery done so she could walk again which was awesome to see. It was really refreshing to go and see those two.

Adventures in Philly

They will rob You!, Flooding, Unusual Unicorns, Turkey Bowl, Apostate...

So first off I have a confession. My Journal writing this transfer has been awful and thus leads me to pulling blanks for this email so if you have any ideas on how to get oneself to write in their journal please message me, your comments will be much appreciated. Anyways I got some funky things to write this time around so please bear with me :3. So just to start off our message here after our preparation hours were over (hard to call it a day ;) ) we went and saw Nancy and Gil which went really well for us. We watched the finding faith in Christ dvd which I had never even seen myself prior to this point, but we had a good spiritual experience with them, only marred by the fact that we got out of their at 9:15 so we were in the ghetto past nine :/. Ya nothing good ever happens after nine up there... We were walking to the elevated subway line since our luck with buses was non existent and then decided we would just walk the rest of the way. Well right outside of the "ell" station this guy stops us and is like, "hey ya'll Mormon?" And we were like, "ya we are" and he's like, "hey it's my Mormon Brothers!!" His girlfriend was like hey Mormons! And right as we are about to talk back he said, "what the Heck are you guys doing here!? (Language edited). They will rob You!!" Well, he walks us up to the the Ell and says we should never come back cause "They will rob You!" Freaked elder Litton out for the rest of the night but besides that we had an uneventful night... Wait a second! No, another adventure began and that was when we came home to find that our toilet that was just, fixed that day, flooded the entire upstairs!! Dang we were angry about that, it leaked down into the first floor ceiling.... >.<. Well it wasn't our plumbers fault but the manufacture piece he replaced. Came back Friday and fixed that.... Ten minutes after he left the toilet broke again :/. Well then.... The next day we went on exchanges and I had elder Chapman with me who is another Golden in our district and we had a really good time. The exchange started late but we were able to talk with a seventh day Adventist before going to the Wasco's for dinner which was good. Had some good home made fried chicken. Now we come to the next point of our emails title. We get onto the elevated line and as we do there is this guy wearing a unicorn mask... :3. We get a giggle or two and are trying to figure out what's going on. Well, he proceeds to get up as if to leave on the next stop. But rather than doing so he turns on some music and starts to poll dance... We bust up laughing as we get off. Man I love serving in the city, it really is the best place. Wednesday wasn't very eventful, since Thanksgiving was on Thursday we had our district meeting then, that was it. We went to a members later that night and had ribs which was really good. Thursday morning was really awesome up hurtful. We had a turkey bowl where our zone and another showed up and we just played football for a couple of hours. It was a ton of fun and I had one really cool play where elder park tipped a pass that was coming for me in hopes of an interception but it came to me and I tipped it as well, well it was floating in the air so I just kept going for it so it was like this weird juggle trying to hold onto this ball on my way to the end zone lol. If that made any sense let me know ;). Thanksgiving was alright though it was a bit weird. We went to the Wasco's after football which took up the rest of our day. Brother Wasco and I had a battle of wits, which was a lot of fun, however right at the very end he beat me out. Friday we had dinner at the Tabers which was nice. They gave us another thanksgiving which is always good ;). Saturday we had football as usual and man that was a cold day. Ground was like concrete but we had fun. Later that night all our appointments cancelled when we received a call from the Giordano family that they wanted us over for a late Thanksgiving dinner that night... Goodness! :). We shared the new, share the gift video, which they loved. Susan for the first time said that she wanted to start coming out to church again which was awesome though unfortunately she didn't show up this time around :(. We are going back Wednesday though for a good lesson and to watch the snake eat a rat! Sunday was an adventure.... We were asked to give elders quorums lesson which was elder Robbins talk "which way do you face". When we got that we were like oh dear... And just like last Sunday the few members who are for lgtb gave their remarks right at the very end so no one could do anything >.<. I'm slightly sick of how this Ward is at times ya know? Well the strange Sunday didn't end there. Spanish branch is having me play their hymns for them and a man taught me how to play the "cheater organ" haha so I was up on that bad boy. It didn't go well. Got the hymns to practice late and had no time to practice so it was pretty bad :/. Mind sending out a how to play the organ book, lol? Man I need to do better this coming week for them. Anyways that about sums up the week.