Post-Christmas

Hey Ya'll!

It was sure nice to talk to ya'll on Christmas! We spent a lot of the day there at the Clays. We played lots of spike ball and ate tons of food and just had a good time. The baptism on Saturday went great too! Elder Andersen baptized him, but I got in, too, to help lift him out of the water. Surprisingly there were quite a few people there! We weren't expecting many the day after Christmas, but  we had the whole room pretty full. On Sunday I confirmed him in Sacrament and next week he'll be interviewing for the priesthood. I feel really good about Johnny; he's reading the Book of Mormon a lot, coming to church every week, and seems to know a lot of people at the church. He also loves family history so we'll be starting him up on some Family Search this week. We've also got a few more investigators coming well along towards baptism and now we're just fixin' for more new investigators.

I read a talk today that reminded me of some of the feelings I have towards the sacrament. First off; the sacrament can be an extremely spiritual experience if you want it to be. In fact it can, with proper spiritual preparation, invite just as much revelation as the temple. The sacrament is for the renewal of all covenants, including the temple covenants, which is why we do it over and over again. Second, before we're baptized we just have the light of Christ to guide us. When we're baptized, we're baptized by water, by the Holy Ghost and by fire. The baptism by water is pretty self explanatory, but the baptism by fire and the Holy Ghost are actually two different things. When we're baptized by the Holy Ghost, we just receive the gift of the Holy Ghost (the first comforter) but the baptism by fire is a continual process. That is when the Spirit sanctifies us and renews us. It is the key to repentance and essential to entering the Celestial Kingdom. The very heart of the baptism by fire is the partaking of the sacrament.  Without that weekly recommitment we can't be renewed. So yeah, make sure when you go to sacrament meeting you've spiritually prepared to have a spiritual experience. I'll end on a quote from my MTC branch president. "If you truly knew how sacred and significant the sacrament is, you'd be willing to crawl on your hands and knees all the way to church just to partake of it."

 I love ya'll!

 Christmas sweater vest from Grandma...

Getting ready for Christmas

We've really enjoyed the 12 days of Christmas! And don't worry, Elder Andersen has put your sticky notes to great use. Personally, the pop tarts have been my favorite so far. We've had fun taking turns reading the stories out loud too.

Fun stuff is happening in Danville! On Monday one of our investigators quit smoking, and hasn't smoked since. He used the stop smoking program we have, so I now I know for a fact it works. Next month he'll be baptized with his wife and they want to be sealed in the temple a year later. We've got another investigator named Jonny getting baptized on Saturday.  He'll be going to the temple soon to do baptisms for the dead for his father who recently passed away, and we have another investigator who really wants to be baptized. She just struggles with Word of Wisdom addictions. So yeah, missionary work is going pretty good!

Elder Everett pretty much cooks all of our food now, which I don't complain at all about.  He's sort of teaching me how to cook. We've been baking a lot of goodies and taking them out to less actives and investigators. The three of us are having a lot of fun together, always someone to pick on.

Can you thank everyone for all the packages? Let Grandma know she'll be getting a great picture of me in the sweater she sent me. I've been so incredibly busy lately, even on P-day.  I wish I could write everyone, but I just don't have time.

Oh yeah, Elder Everett has been teaching me how to sing Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer in Inupiat. He's pretty fluent in it so it's been fun.

Welp, I'll tell you more details about me life on Friday! (Christmas day is one of the two days during the year we get to talk to Sam.  We'll have a Facebook video call from him.) I don't take pictures very often so here are some old ones I don't think I've sent yet.

A New Companion

I really like the tree and ornaments! I enjoyed reading all the notes, but I didn't recognize a lot of the names. I particularly enjoyed Brett Bateman's.

So our new companion is Elder Everett from Alaska. He grew up way up in the arctic about 23 miles north of Nome in a little village called Catsabu. (Yes he grew up in a village). He's pretty chill, and super easy to train so thats nice. I really enjoy him and he's pretty funny; probably my favorite companion so far. Also he speaks Inupiac. (Not sure how to spell that but it's the language all the Eskimos speak.)

So we have a new neighbor.  His name is Billy and he's crazy southern.  We've been helping him move in and he offered to let us use one of his spare Christmas trees since we didn't have one. So we took the offer and set it up and then the next day we woke up and all smelled like cigarettes and something that's hard to describe. Like all true southeners Billy is a heavy smoker.  Anyway, I sprayed Febreeze on it, and that made the smell ten times worse because the tree was now wet. So I sprayed some of my Old Spice spray on it and that was really, really bad. We ended up sticking the tree outside for a few days and sprayed it with disinfectant so now most of the smell is gone. BTW I love my new tie!!!!!!!

This week we've just kinda been helping Elder Everett get adjusted and teaching a few investigators how to stop smoking.  That's been rough but we're making some serious progress. We've also got another investigator that's getting baptized in a week or so.  He's been the easiest person to teach. We just ask him to read and pray and he does everything we ask. He's coming to church actively too and is also getting a lot of fellowship from the ward members.

The ward has been treating us good. We had a ward Christmas party and we were the three wisemen. (photo attached)

I'm super happy here and really excited for Christmas! We're going over to the C's on Christmas and the M's on Christmas Eve so I'm pretty stoked. Being in a trio is awesome and crazy fun, never a dull moment. I love and miss ya'll,

Sam

Staying in Danville

Hey ya'll! It's nice to hear from you. I love getting emails!

So I'm not getting transferred. Me and Elder Andersen are training a new missionary together which means I'm hitting my 6 month mark in Danville. Freakin 6 months, can you believe it!? But I'm so excited to be in a trio. That's gonna be a blast! We've just got to figure out how to fit all of us in our tiny house.....

Things are going pretty smoothly here. We've got another investigator getting baptized in a few weeks, and he's getting a lot of support from the ward which is awesome. And we have another couple we're teaching who's progressing pretty well, although they couldn't come to church on Sunday because there was a shooting by their house that night and they took off and stayed with some friends. Pretty crazy place Danville is...

Today we went mountain biking as a district. We've got some really nice mountain bike trails here in Danville so that was super fun! The only person getting transferred from our district is our district leader Elder Greenwood, so its nice we'll still all be together.

I'm getting pretty excited for Christmas. The C's signed up to have us over so that's gonna be fun; they're a really nice family. We've been showing the church's new video 'A Savior is Born' a lot to the people we come across. If you haven't watched it yet make sure you do! (Here's the website if you'd like to watch it:  https://www.mormon.org/christmas)

I finished the Book of Matthew this morning. I think the New Testament is probably my favorite set of scriptures right now. I'm a little more than halfway through Jesus the Christ, but I haven't been reading it much lately. I also read a really good talk from Neil A. Maxwell about revelations yet to come. He talked about the sealed portion of the Book of Mormon and the records of the lost tribes of Israel. Really cool stuff. 

Write again soon!

Love,
Sam

Mountain biking with Sam as photographer