Quick email to Mom

Hey Mom sorry for the lack of an email this past P-day! Like I said things were kind of hectic with us being lost with the zone leaders and stuff haha. But luckily they were nice enough to let us email today instead :) Man that's sweet that you guys will be heading into the new office soon! You'll have to send me some pictures of it when you guys get moved in.
So Lauren and her mom were asking about my family this past weekend after the baptism (I told them that you were a convert as well) and I got to just talk and talk about you Dad and Shell to them. I got to tell them about work and how awesome you guys do and Shellie with her new job haha, the whole deal. And by the end of it they both told me "Man, I can really tell that you love both of your parents a lot." and of course my response to that was "Heck yea I do! They're awesome!" haha. They said both of you guys sound like kick-butt parents too with all the work you and Dad do every day and yet you still manage to keep the cleanest house I've ever seen haha :)
So just a cool little story I thought I'd share with ya! Just letting you know I love and miss you guys lots!

Lauren's Baptism!

Sorry for the delayed email, we had a super busy p-day with our zone leaders and they got lost on the way back to the apartment so that took out our email hour and they gave us permission to take it sometime later in the week once we got some time haha. Man that was great to see the pictures of our newest edition to the family Kendyl! I wish I could be there to see her but I suppose I'll still be able to see her just before she turns two though right? haha. That's so good to hear everything went well and both her and Sonya are doing well.
That was great to hear the same news with Josh and McKinna's new baby as well! And I hear Soda is going to state too! What an exciting week it sounds like it's been back home.
Man it has been a fantastic past week here too though. Lauren's baptism went great! The talks all went well and tons of people from the ward showed up, plus we got the font all filled in time (I guess the last couple baptisms in the ward the missionaries didn't start filling the font early enough and didn't get it very full haha). Man the water was cold though! We had run the cold and hot water both all the way on for about 45 minutes and then switched to just straight hot for the last hour and 15 minutes thinking that would be good enough but that only made the top 6 inches warm and the rest ice cold haha. So that was quite a surprise stepping down into it haha but man was getting to do the actual baptising was so sweet! You could just feel how incredibly happy Lauren was to be being baptised, it was an awesome experience. Also her Mom showed up, which was a great surprise to everyone because originally her Mom was really opposed to her being baptised (she's Jewish so the idea of her daughter joining the Church of Jesus Christ was kind of different) but she came and we talked to her afterwards and she was very glad that she decided to be there and really enjoyed the whole thing.
It's transfer week! Which also includes the exciting news that I will be staying here in Sterling and my companion will be leaving (that last parts kind of a bummer). The exciting part about that though... is that I'll be training a brand new missionary!!! We got a call from the Assistants to the Pres Monday night letting us know that I'll be bringing a brand new Elder out into the field this Thursday and training him here in Sterling Park! So cool! So I'll definitely have to let you guys know how everything goes this next week. That's what kept me from emailing yesterday too haha we had a trainers meeting that took almost all day and then once we got back to the apartment we were busy with appointments the rest of the night (which really is a pretty nice problem to have haha). So man what a past week it has been. Lot's of exciting things going on both here and home by the sounds of it. I'll update you guys this next week Monday to let you guys know how things go with the new guy! Hope all is well and things continue to go great for everyone!

Email from President Albright

Sorry, but he said to tell you that he ran out of time on both days, Monday and Tuesday were so filled with activities and meetings that he never made it to a computer.  Today he was called to be a new trainer of a new missionary and had training meetings this afternoon, then he ran off to lessons with investigators.  Training a greenie is a very sacred assignment.  According to Elder Holland, it is the most sacred trust that can be given to a missionary.  He is very excited to meet his new companion on Thursday!  Your son is an amazing missionary!

Much Love,

President Albright

Sweet Week!

Man it's been a sweet week, we finally had some success knocking on doors! We found a total of 4 new people to teach, which is super sweet. Unfortunately 2 of them will be out of town for the next 2 weeks though so it'll be awhile before we get to meet with them again, but still sweet haha. The biggest news for this week though is Lauren's baptism coming up this saturday morning, and she decided that she wants me to be the one who baptises her too, so thats super cool! We're all very excited for that here. She is just as excited as we are too, she's really just latched onto everything we've taught her. I'll be sure to take lots of pictures before and after of the whole deal. Oh and speaking of pictures I got my camera charger back! So now I can start taking pictures again haha. I got it back this Saturday when we got to go through the temple with a lady we had been teaching back in McLean. She had been inactive for like 15 years straight and so when she decided to start coming back to church she really wanted us to just give her the lessons like she was new again because it had been so long. She sent me a postcard last wednesday asking if I would be able to make it up to McLean to be there for it and President gave us permission! So we got to go do that and I got to see everyone from McLean 2nd again, it was a lot of fun. So overall it was a really great week, I'll let you guys know how the baptism goes this weekend!

Awesome Week!

Well it was quite an awesome week here in Sterling. We had such a good time seeing Granny and Pa this past Thursday. They both looked great and it was so awesome to get to talk to them about how their mission was. We went up to Macaroni Grill for lunch then we made our way up to the Natural History Museum at the Smithsonian in DC (we got lost a good number of times haha), then we headed back to my old area of McLean 2nd to have dinner with the members there that are distant cousins of ours. Such a good time! We took lots of great pictures too, unfortunately I didn't get to take very many because my camera was almost dead and it turns out I left the charger in the Mclean 2 apartment :/ so hopefully I'll be able to get that back from them before too long. But the natural history museum is huge! We were there for a good 2 hours and didn't even get to see a fraction of what all was there. We did make our way through the dinosaur exhibit, the oceans (ancient and modern), and the minerals and gems exhibits though and man was that cool. It was just so surreal being with Granny and Pa again though! I was thinking about it and I'm pretty sure that's the longest I've ever gone without seeing them before, so crazy! So obviously that was a pretty awesome part of the week haha. The day before though was exchanges so I stayed here in Sterling with our district leader Elder Lieu from Malasia (I think there's supposed to be a Y in that somewhere but I'm not sure) and we had a good time. We got to get some good use out of the bikes for once because my companion Elder Johnson has some medical problems with the glands in his eyes that make it so he can't ride in the cold weather. So Elder Lieu and I were able to reach some of the extremities of the area and try some new door approaches. We had a pretty crazy first time experience though. We were looking for someone to talk to because every door we had knocked on wasn't home so far and Elder Lieu was saying "There has to be somebody here for us to talk to, we didn't go this far up here for nothing" then immediately afterwards we hear someone whistling a little ways away and Elder Lieu was like "Oh my gosh that's the person! We've got to find them." So this was like 8 o clock at night and there were no street lights in this part of the area so it was very dark, but we managed to see a silhouette of a lady walking her dogs down a long trail not to far from us who must have been the one whistling, so we went to start talking to her and as soon as we had finished introducing ourselves she shook our hands and said "Hi I'm Samantha" in one of the deepest manliest voices I'd ever heard, so really we were both pretty startled and surprised but she proceeded that she was what the Native Americans called "two-spirited" or trans-gender... and he had recently gone through surgery to become this way and wasn't much interested in what we had to say. It was probably one of the weirdest things I'd ever experienced haha. So he shared with us some scriptures out of the Bible that talked about Eunichs and sent us on our way haha. Elder Lieu was pretty disappointed that that wasn't the person we were supposed to find and talk to haha. So that was a pretty crazy experience. This weekend went quite well though, our investigator Lauren has decided that she wants to move her baptism to an even earlier date and so that will now be not this weekend but next weekend. So we are very excited for that and she is as well. We are still trying our hardest to find more people to teach though, currently we only have Lauren and a lady named Bonnie who is really hard to set up times to meet with because she's so busy all the time. But we will find someone eventually! All we have to do is give it our best and the Lord will take care of the rest haha. Man this has been quite a long email so I'm almost out of time already. It was a very eventful week though haha. I hope all is well and I miss all of you guys!

Invitation to be baptized accepted!

Well for the most part we didn't have a ton of success this past week but we did have one pretty awesome thing happen. This girl we are teaching named Lauren (one of our 2 current people we're teaching haha) accepted the invite to be baptized! That will be happening on February 25th and man we are excited! She has been meeting with the missionaries for a couple of months now and she's really come a long way. She is surprisingly proactive with everything we teach her haha. At first she was just more of friends with the missionaries and she didn't really take much of what they said to heart. But as we've been teaching her recently we've been leaving her with commitments to pray about whatever we teach her and she told us on Friday right before we asked her to baptised that there hasn't been one thing that we have taught her that she hasn't prayed about and believes! Which is super sweet because we've pretty much taught her everything that is in the standard lessons now haha. So that's pretty dang exciting. But besides that this week we've just been knocking on doors like crazy! We've had quite a bit of potential people to teach come from it so far though so I don't think it will be too long before we see the fruit of our labors. I am super pumped to see Granny and Pa this week though! We had zone conference this past Friday morning so I had a chance to sit
down with President Albright and talk to him one on one about it and I asked him if, since we would be seeing them on a Thursday, we would be able to move our P-day to then so we could spend the day with them and try heading up to DC? And he said that that was a great idea and we could do it for sure! Man that's going to be awesome! So he told us to hang on to an hour for emailing today and then start our P-day at 11 oclock Thursday with Granny and Pa. So cool! So it's been a pretty exciting past couple of days and I think we are set up for a great week ahead of us. Today we are planning on stopping by all of the potential people who's doors we knocked on last week so that should give us some really good appointments for the rest of the week too. Oh man and I almost forgot to mention we went up to the Temple Visitor's Center (TVC) on Saturday with this family from the ward and Lauren and man it was sweet. We called ahead so the TVC Sister Missionaries could set up a little tour, lesson, and movie for us while we were there and it turned out really good. I got a really good picture in front of the Temple too that I'll be sending back soon. So overall things are picking up here in Sterling Park. The work continues to move on forward and hopefully we can find some new people to teach this upcoming week! I hope all is well out in Vegas, Utah, Idaho, Georgia, and Russia/Utah! I'll let you guys know how this next week goes and I'll be sure to take tons of pictures with Pa and Granny this week!