To Do Good in This Generation: Glorious, spicy squid jerky, and ward Christmas party

December 8, 2014

This week the missionary work was slow...we only found 4 new investigators while tracting! It was awesome. Elder Farnsworth and I got a request from a returned sister missionary to come with us to an appointment we had, and we told her it would be great if she came. Her mom drove her to the appointment, it fell through, and since we had nothing else to do, we decided to all go tracting (I can't say that I'll ever be off my mission and say "Well, I have nothing else to do, so I might as well go tracting, but who knows). Basically, we blame our success on her faith and diligence, and we are thrilled to say the least.

It wasn't all like that, though, since more than one door was shut in our face. I love it when people tell us no, and then they shut and lock the door...it's not like we're going to kick the door down or walk in after you. Locking it is just that extra rejection that we, of course, love to receive.

There was actually one lady that might have had a good reason to lock her door after we left. We found her tracting, she's almost totally deaf, her first language is Japanese, and no one else lives with her. After trying to teach the first lesson while literally yelling at her so she could hear, and even that didn't do much good, we said we would go and get a Japanese Book of Mormon for her. The next day, since I knew she was almost deaf and the TV was on really loud, I knocked about as hard as I could on the door. After 30 seconds when she didn't come to the door, I started banging the door again and...she opened it right then. Yelling at her after that so she could hear probably didn't help her opinion of us, but I wanted to make sure that she remembered us from last time. We ended up giving her the book and leaving since we didn't want to try and shout the second lesson.

At our ward Christmas party, we had to do a skit for the Elder's Quorum since no one else would volunteer, but it actually turned out really well. My comp might put it on youtube, and if so I'll send the link. Also, the kids were more excited to see the Elsa and Anna than Santa, but that's just a sidenote. We also are going to be singing What Child is This in our zone Christmas devotional, so I'll send that link if it turns out well.

The other glorious thing that happened this week was that song, Glorious. I discovered that my companion has it on his USB, so we probably listened to that about 100 times this week. It's such a good, uplifting, happy, easy-to-try-to-harmonize-to song.

I have nothing else to say other than I am half excited and half dreading Christmas. I know Christmas itself is going to be awesome, especially if I get packages and/or letters from people *cough cough* (after all, it would only take about 3 to make the room under our tree full. And yes, those are missionary pamphlets that we used to prop the tree up. Word of Wisdom for the win), but the week after I think is going to be quite depressing, getting back into the swing of things and all of that. We'll see how it goes I guess. Maybe if we have some more of this 55-60 degree December weather I'll stay content. Hope you all have a great week and enjoy the pictures!