Closet Fixings, Strange Week, Brilliant Exchange Plan Foiled, Brace Yourselve

I'm not to entirely sure what I will be reporting about this past weeks since it was quite strange... Successful, but very strange indeed. Since we had zone conference last week, weekly planning kept getting pushed and pushed till what do Ya know it is Tuesday... Nothing else to report here :P. Wednesday the entire morning was pretty well filled up with Bob our Plummer coming to do the finishing touches for our shower and he also came and fixed my closet which is really nice to have though I may only have this week left so we will see if I get to enjoy it now or not :P. Later though we went to the church where elder Litton taught Brandon how to do family history which he loved while I had a facebook lesson. So moving on to my brilliant idea for exchanges. I can't stand going to other areas on exchanges but Ya gotta do what Ya gotta do so I had to go to the other area. One of the reasons I hate doing this is that other elders don't seem to find it important to wash their sheets, so it's just gross :P and I can't sleep. So I have spare bed sheets! Problem solved right? Denied :/. The bed was hard as a rock and poor elder Sutton was up all night with heart burn so we both slept a total of about two hours XP. However we did have a pretty funny experience. One of their investigators has been getting anti Christianity from one of his Muslim friends so when we were over there I essentially got to give him a speal and info on how to counter back or I guess in other words bash :3. Right afterwards I had an interesting conversation with a drunk man who told me Jesus is black and that he was the reason woman and children in the area weren't starving... 0.o. Other than at though we haven't had anything to crazy happen this past week. Daisy is doing well, though due to family health problems we haven't seen her but we are going tonight. Jen is doing well to and is actually working to stop swearing and is reading the Book of Mormon so we are doing good in that department. With Jens daughters, to get them reading, I am going to be adding a little zest to either the inside or outside cover of two Book of Mormons :3. Going to be putting scooby doo on one and Stitch on the other haha. It'll be interesting but fun. Last thing is that we have transfer calls on Friday..... 😱! On average, missionaries would be hitting there third area after their year mark. I have the possibility of hitting my fifth.... I know what your going to say but to be honest I'm not looking forward to another move :/. Been here for three transfers so probably leaving, don't know though so meh! That about raps the week up for now!

Christmas morning & Macrae with Elder Murphy at Zone Conference

WML Bronies, Baptismal Dates Max, Lundberg, God does Your Back Hurt? Cause You're Really Carrying this Team...

This weeks episode, we begin where we left off with the leaving for a meal appointment with our Ward Mission Leader Brother Peterson. Well like all appointments, we begin with the usual converse and banter of topic to be told when I and the Peterson family made a connection over Anime. Strange I know since I'm not the biggest one for it but I had my two shows and a movie here or there.., besides the point it started off with good conversation when I poked fun at my little pony just to find out that both Brother and Sister Peterson are into this new "My Little Pony" :/..... For such a small group I've encountered the Bronie movement in all but one area of the mission where I've saved myself or totally kicked myself. Well I digress from said topic with a report that the food was good! Tuesday was pretty darn exciting for Elder Litton and myself you see. Most of the day was frankly uneventful right up until the very end where we went and saw Gil with Nancy and her family. For the first time since I have been over to that house we had everyone in on the lesson and it was quiet! That never happens over there! They were all participating to which was amazing as we taught the plan of salvation. The only thing that marred the experience is that once we reached the spirit world I asked Gill a question of what his thoughts were about those who never heard about Jesus when he took a fifteen minute detour about other religions and didn't even answer the question :/. Well with no time left and the kids no longer attentive due to the detour we set all but one up with a baptismal date! We will get the last of Nancy's kids, she is like 11 and is just worried about being called a Christian, which we explained we were, but for whatever reason, it just didn't sink so we will be seeing them tonight and finish the lesson :3. So that brings us to a miraculous number of 6 baptismal dates, woot! Nancy has been set with a date before but I wanna see this one go through Ya know? Well I'll continue on to Wednesday. I went on exchanges with Elder Lundberg (one of our zone leaders) in his area which is the Frankford part of Philly. The day was pretty well set for us. Lessons all day long with little finding time which I'm ok with since teaching is the best! We had some less actives we visited at the end of the day that had recently watched some anti videos called "What the Mormon Missionaries don't want you to know". They knew that a lot of the stuff wasn't true and who ever came up with that video was quite the moron since we were able to resolve every concern in literal moments :P. They promised to come to church since we did that, so today I'll be seeing if they did ;). Elder Lundberg had been my favorite zone leader on the mission thus far and I hope that I can continue to serve around him a little longer. We have transfers in two weeks and Elder Litton and I don't know which of us is going but we are pretty sure that at least one of us will :(. I came back from the exchange to have a sick dog for a companion. Elder Litton got a 24 hour flu like thing and due to a Plummer that never showed up and Littons condition not much happened. Lately I've wondered if that flu shot might have been worth it since lately everyone we teach has been getting it and I know that I can't keep getting lucky rolls of the dice, haha. But it's a bit late now and I'm still to stubborn to get something that has a "chance" of keeping me safe... Seen more of a "chance" getting it afterwards :P. Friday was taken up by zone conference. It was good as usual. Compliments, rebukes, teaching and guidance. It took up pretty much the whole day and since Elder Litton had a meeting afterwards, I went with Elder Chapman to Frankford where we had a lesson and played UNO with their branch members which was nice. Saturday is where the amazing stuff happened. A few days before a lady named Denise had called and we set up an appointment. For the past four months we've either talked to her outside of the door since we didn't have a guy with us or when we did she wasn't home. Very frustrating haha. Well we finally got to go in with a member. We were only able to teach a bit of the restoration since this particular member has his interesting ways of explaining things but besides that she is super prepared and though we didn't set her with a date we invited her to be baptized which she agreed to once she new it was true! We then went straight to Daisy with some other members. Great as usual Daisy is probably one of the most prepared person I've worked with. We taught the word of wisdom but she had already quit drinking a couple years ago, was working on quitting smoking, doesn't drink coffee, and only has iced tea every once in awhile :3. She came to church yesterday and loved it too! She is an awesome lady and I think that she will be baptized real soon here. Hopefully while I am still here! ;) God works miracles yes he does. Well that about concludes our week. We were going for a go for broke plan yesterday and get as many lessons as possible when meetings and a last minute notice to play the organ kinda, well broke our plans :P.

Winter Came, Never Trust a Golden.... Not Even with the Donut Selection, 1 down twelve to go, Hot Shower!

As I recall this time last year I found myself in a small white room next to many more small white rooms which exteriors were covered with yellow bricks which were surrounded by other yellow brick faced buildings with their own little white rooms receiving a lecture that more or less sunk deep into my sub-conscience where it was lost amoungst the many vicarious things that I had probably been asked to do while playing video games.... Oh I was stressed like mad to ;)! Now I find myself surrounded by brick row homes, people asking for money, others receptive to our message and of course the rare but yet so real poll dancing unicorns.... The stress having been replaced by the feeling that I never really woke up this morning but I can accept that ;)! Now that I may or may not have thoroughly confused someone's noggin I'll proceed to write about my week and the events that took place. Nothing happened Monday so we will continue to Tuesday. Tuesday was like any other day... Then we opened the window to find that Mother Nature had left us a nice layer of snow which was still continuing to fall and the cold shoulder of actual winter temperatures! Finally! I was getting a bit worried that we would never get it. Though I hate being cold I don't believe I will ever move to anyplace that doesn't receive snow since I feel that my internal clock requires it to know the world hasn't ended. I was on exchanges with Elder Christensen who is still new. This is his second transfer and most of the day was us going to find referrals the sister missionaries had given them but unfortunately non of them were interested. We also dropped one of their investigators since she "didn't want to be confused" by also reading the Book of Mormon which would some how confuse her from the bible. Yet another instance where someone who hasn't even looked at the book already making judgments :P. Also a really interesting thing we came across on this exchange was the most ridiculous bible tract that I have ever stumbled upon :3. Just to give a glimpse of this sucker (two pages long...) it talks about how Satan is going to mutate HIV to kill in three months but you can be healed through sulfur and a written prayer. Will use "trance" people who slow traffic, can shoot but not reload guns, attack teenage boys, and have struggles climbing trees.... ?. Well moving on to Wednesday I hate sleeping at other elders places. Never sleep and they never clean their bedsheets :P. While I was away Elder Litton found us a new less active and investigator which was really sweet who we met later on this week. We taught Daisy the Plan of Salvation which she loved. She has been doing good this week and we saw her again on Sunday. Unfortunately she was sick and wasn't able to make it to church but she is doing good all the same. We also saw Gill later that night and taught part of the Plan of Salvation as well. Thursday was the year mark, woo! Made it! I was looking through the calendar app when I saw just how sad of a Golden missionary I was :3. The event stated "Year mark, did we make it?". So I made sure to put an event under, that said yes we did, haha. District meeting was good as usual, our schedule was really weird though. It just seemed that time was constantly getting away :P. Pam who is a less active broke her ankle or at least thought she had. We went back yesterday to find that she still hadn't gone to see a doctor because she is a stubborn lady like that Ya know? We gave her a blessing and encouraged her to see a doctor which she said she would. Now that I think of it we gave a lot of blessings this past week. Way more than I've ever done at one point in time :)! Including a fluffy Pomeranian haha. Didn't see that one coming. Friday Bob our Plummer came and fixed the shower finally which was amazing, for the first time since I got to this area we were finally able to have a hot shower rather than cold ones! Goodness that's one of those things you forget how good it is when Ya have it but once it's gone you really see the difference. We had a lesson with Jen and Rita that night, it was alright. The main highlight was giving her her first blessing for the terrible migraine that she was having. She loved it and asked for another one right afterwards haha. She was feeling a lot better afterwards and by the next morning it was completely gone. Miracles! The next morn we had a service project rather than e usual football routine with the clean up philly guy Ray Gant. It went really well! It was so cold though that I actually wore jeans to which everyone made a fuss over since I practically always where shorts when the opportunity arrives haha. So our new less active and investigator are Stephanie and Daesha (left to right :3). Stephanie is awesome! She was baptized in 2009 after she went through a hemorrhaging aneurysm but is still practically all there, just slow. And her Daughter inlaw Daesha is her nurse and has investigated the church a bit before. Now what's cool is that we met Daesha the first week Litton got here but the info she gave us was one digit wrong on the address and their phone had been turned off at the time we tried to call. So we thought that they were lost forever.... Then some missionaries from her past area contacted us and told us all the info haha! Got'em! We also picked up a part member family (son hasn't been baptized and is twelve). That was an awkward visit. Rykeem the kid who we were supposed to teach was playing games with friends up stairs when we came so his mom had him quit to come visit with us... He had some of the worst attitude ever :P. Then our member present and his mom just talked for forever.... We got stuck there awhile hehe. So last but not least we went to Danas as usual. It was one of those awkward visits at first due to the cold shoulder of pure hatred just roaming throughout the house. James our new investigator is apparently a compulsive liar and hard drinker had destroyed a lot of Danas stuff and had it not been for Mike he should have been kicked out of the house... So things like the tv weren't turned off immediately :/. Finally we got it off and had a really good lesson which then followed the blessing of the Pomeranian :3. It was weird but the good dog will be alright ;). Well that sums it up, went to South Philly for a cheese steak today which was awesome! Saw Bill on the bus to which was funny haha.

God and Nerf Wars, Wasco's, Buffet Mistakes, Return of the Susan, Dry Mormon

So to start off with today's letter I will begin with a bit of bragging and geekiness, I finally won Munchkin! And won all my football games, so I'm satisfied with this past week to say the very least. It was a good week and it has Elder Litton and I a bit psyched and ready to see what will be happening this coming week. So to begin, we started the week, Monday night by going to the Dighl family for family home evening which was cool but slightly strange at the time. Brother Dighl had a busy ruogh day so he was asleep the entire time we were there. Her son who can't be more than two years old speaks a mixture of English, cantaneez, and his own gibberish all at once so translations varied :3. It went really well though had a little dinner and shared a message about the new year and Lots wife which was fun. Tuesday our appointment with Daisy unfortunately cancelled and not much else happened that day till the evening with one of our eternagators, Jen. She's a lot of fun and very sparatic and has been on the potential drop list for a bit but this is how things go. So that night we had little time left so we dropped by to see if we could get a return appointment. Well we got it for the next day along with an unexpected nerf war with her and her kids which was a lot of fun. Well here comes Wednesday the new year and later that evening we start off with another Nerf war this time with one of Jens friends there named Rita. Had a lot of fun, when Jen sat down and said alright kids go to the other room cause we are going to talk God haha :3! It went very well and we also picked Rita up as a New Investigator! Prodestant, has a husband and daughter though we haven't met the Husband and has very sincere questions and from what we can tell interest as well. Saw them all on Friday again and we had even better results so we are excited for our next visit with them. Thursday we had the Brown family which was just ok. Their dog tried to bight Elder Litton again so we put him out back. Later that night though we got to see the Wasco's for the first time in a month and it was awesome! Brother Wasco was supposed to leave on Saturday but instead they decided to come to church for the first time since I've been here, before he left, so woot! I offended them a little bit though which was a bit funny. They have an awesome wooden monopoly set with complete metal pieces which they bring out for special occasions such as the holidays. I told them I had never actually played monopoly which set the conversation for at least five minutes ha! Getting home was going to be troublesome since we got out of there so late but due to luck and the big man up stairs we only got home five minutes late rather than 45 ;). Saturday we were able to recontact Madeline and Alexis which was sweet! They have some of the most sincere questions I have had on the mission and since we went over the restoration it cleared up a lot of the confusion we had with our last lesson three months ago :P... Later that night due to Elder Litton performing in the Messiah president Burno of the Frankford branch had us and the two sets of Frankford elders over for dinner. He took us to a chines hibachi grill which was really good though we all made the big mistake of eating way to much! Fast Sunday was the next day too! So Ya that was interesting but I would have to say I was surprised to find that Octopus tastes really good! Crawfish not so much.... XP. Yesterday we had quiet a few member presents set up... Which all fell through so we improvised during the time that we had lessons and went and gave Nancy a blessing and a lesson which was pretty sweet, she very much appreciated it. We also saw the Giordano clan and since it was extra crazy that night Susan had us step outside to talk. Answered a few of her questions and at the very end she said that she wants to come back so woo! Just need to get her back into the habit so we will do our best. Last but not least is that we had dinner like the usual with Mike and Dana with everyone else there. What was really cool though, is that the new guy living there, James, came home early from church so he could hear from us and as we were teaching Dana would pop in and teach as well... Dry Mormon anyone! I leaned over to Mike and asked if we should start filling the font to which he replied yes haha. It'll be awhile for Dana but we are excited for James.