Craxy week!

Well it sure has been a crazy week here in Centreville! With it being the week leading up to transfers and getting close to Christmas there has been a lot of stuff out of the ordinary going on haha. We had that Conference Monday I mentioned in my last email and then we had that day of driving around to various doctors appointments and then we had our Wednesday P-day that I sent my email on. Then Thursday was a good solid day of normal missionary life, which was awesome haha. But then Friday morning was our mission wide Christmas Party, it was really sweet! We had a lot of good food and a really good talent show, it turns out we have a lot or musically talented missionaries here in our mission! That was fun getting to see everyone again. It's not often that all of our mission gets together for things, usually its just a part of it that gets together, so it was really great to have all of us missionaries in one spot. After the Christmas party we went with our Zone Leaders to pick up our mission shirts for this year and they are really cool too. Then Saturday was our wards Christmas Party and it was alot of fun, mostly because of how many non-members were there haha. That was really great. There were a few people we have been teaching that were there and then lots of people who had brought their non-member friends that we got to talk to. A few of the ward members also put on the play Scrooge and did a really good job. This week is a very very stressful week though because it's transfer week and I really don't want to leave here but I'm pretty sure I am :/ I feel like this has kinda been a short email but I don't really have too much I can talk about this week because of how late in the week my last email was haha. It was a good week here in Centreville though, just a crazy one haha. I hope everyone is having a great week back home wherever you are though! Hopefully my next email will come from Centreville still! I love and miss you guys lots!

What a week! 12/12 email

Well it sure has been a crazy week here in Cenreville! But everything is really going great! This week our P-day got moved to today because Elder Packer of the 70 came and spoke to the whole mission Monday morning and man was it awesome! It went really really long though haha, we were there at the chapel for 6 and a half hours. He shared some rally great things wih us hough and promisd us los of blessings for working as hard as we can. So just a quick note just in case you noticed haha my typing isn't the best today. We have a third computer in our computer lab that we have to us when the oher ones are in use and it's keyboard doesnt really work how it should haha so it is really frstrating to ry ad get it to type, basically the buttons are all broken from people pressing them too hard so now sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. So at random points in the email today you'll probably notice I'm missing lots of letters haha. So because of the conference on monda our p-day would have been movd to yesterday but Elder Skinner had a fw doctors apointments he had to get to that were way down in Fredricksburg where his las area was at, which is close o a two hour drive haha so we spent the whole day yesterday in the car oing to those and got permission to take our p-day today instead haha. This past week I was really excited to get a whole bunch of packages in a row! I got 2 from my Family, one from my Grandparents, and 2 for some stuff I ordered off LDS.org all in a period of 5 days haha it was awesome! So thank you to all those who have sent me ackaes this past week! We had a few really great lessons his past week as well. We had one on Wednesday with a lady we are teaching that wants to stop smoking, so we taught her about this plan that missionaies use that can get anyone to stop wanting to smoke for good after just 7 days, so far it's worked awesome! We have been calling her every night since we taught her the lesson and she has stayed smoke free all 6 days! If she does everything the program asks her to do today too she should be completely smoke free! We are really excited about that and will be having a paty for her tomorrow night o celebrate. We also had a great lesson with our Korean investigator who is the best friend of the Bishops son here in our ward and he is set and excited to be Baptized on the 24th! We finished reviewing everthing he needs to know to be ready for the 24th and man he is stoked! His friend will e the one doing the baptism too so it should be an awesome experince all around. This past week we have also had some major bike trouble too though unfortunately. Elder Skinner broke his rear derailleur and derailleur hanger, which the derailleur can just be bought from any old bike shop but the hanger has to be special ordered. So we have been borrowing the Sister's bike since tuesday haha. Since Elder Skinner unsed to downhill race back home e likes to take his bike off any jump he sees on our way to our appointments haha and e can't really do that on the Sister's bike because it's completel rigid (no suspension) so I let him ride mine while I used the Sister's and he ended up getting a flat on my back tire with a pretty good sized chunk of rusty metal then after we patched i up and got it back together we noticed that my back brake caliper is broke and doesn't stop he bike anymore... so I've got to go buy one of those at the bike shop today so I can have more than just my front brakes haha. Neither of those breaks were his fault though they were both just chance haha. So a lot of the P-day oday will be spent doing some bike repairs haha. It was a great wek here though! Our weather is cooling down, which I'm super excited about haha, and hopefully we will get some snow soon! Well that's about it for this week, I hope everyone has had a grat week wherever you are! I love and iss you guys lots!

A Great Week Here in Centreville 1st!

We sure have had a great week here in Centreville! We had a lot of great lessons and some great progress with a woman we have been teaching for a long time now! She and 4 other people we are teaching all came to church this Sunday, it was awesome! We think that she'll understand what we are talking about a lot better now that she's been to church before, it was her first time coming. I got put in charge of entertaining her two kids so that she could listen to the speakers. One little boy who is 4 years old and all over the place, I probably looked at every picture in my Gospel Principles book with him 2 or 3 times by the end of sacrament meeting haha. By the end of it he started to figure out which one Jesus was in each of the pictures, which made his Mom really happy haha. The other was a little 7 year old girl who was much easier to keep busy because she appears to have a crush on me haha, so all I had to do was give her my study journal to draw pictures and let her lean on my arm the whole time haha. We think it really helped the woman we were teaching focus on the people speaking, she really seemed to enjoy it. Hopefully they make it back next week! We also started teaching a few new people this week, which is always good news haha, one is the boyfriend of a member who has just recently started coming to church and the other is an 18 year old boy who is the friend of a family in the ward. Both first lessons with each of them this week went great. We're really looking forward to teaching them some more. Something else cool that happened this past week though that I always enjoy is I got to go on an exchange over to the Spanish Elders' area again this Friday and Saturday. That was now my third exchange with the Spanish Elders here so I'm getting a little better at sharing the Gospel in Spanish but still not too much better haha. I was able to bear testimony in Spanish though at our lesson Friday night, Elder Ursenbach (my temporary Spanish companion for the exchange) was teaching them about what sounded like the Law of Chastity because I had heard them use the word "Fornacacion" a few times haha, so we were reading a few scriptures with the couple from the book of Mormon about it and I was able to say afterwards in my not so great Spanish "Yo se este Libro es la Palabra de Dios y es verdad, es por Usted y por Usted y es verdad" Which translates to "I know that this book is the Word of God and it's true, it's for you (looking at the one) and for you (looking at the other) and it is true." It was a very cool experience and I'm pretty sure that because of that they both thought that I could speak Spanish because they asked me to say the closing prayer, which I definitely don't know how to do in Spanish haha so I had to ask them if it was okay if I said it in English, which they said was fine haha. Then the next morning I was able to give out a Book of Mormon in Spanish too, which was a lot easier haha just "Quire este Libro?" or "Do you want this Book?" haha. It was a fun exchange though. Well that's about it for this week! I hope everyone is having a great week back home wherever you are! I love and miss all of you!

Pictures!



Elder Gronning's district

Sight seeing in DC

Man it is cold!

Well it sure has gotten very very cold this past week! Especially this past couple of days! It has been low 40's for the high this weekend and looks like it should stay that way throughout the week haha. I'll personally take it over being really hot and sweaty but man some of these bike rides home at night have been like 26 degrees and man are they freezing! We had a great thanksgiving week here though! We had a few really good lessons with some of our progressing investigators and had a single woman bring her non-member friend to church yesterday who said he would love for us to come teach him at his house this week. Way cool! The area just seems to be getting better and better each week. I wish I could stay here the rest of my mission! haha. Thanksgiving day was really great though. I ate until I couldn't eat anymore, then kept eating! We had our first meal at a members home at 2 o clock and were planning to eat later that night with our investigator at 7 o clock. The dinner at the members home was amazing! She made the sweet potato souffle and man it was way good! I ate a bunch of servings of that haha. Then we had some really good stuffing and turkey and potatoes, all the good old traditional thanksgiving food (which I stuffed myself on). Then she brought our desert, which I didn't know we were having so I was already full haha, which was 4 different pies: a banana creme (my favorite), pumpkin pie, apple pie, and pumpkin pecan pie. They were so good! Even though I was full I managed to squeeze down a couple of good sized slices haha. So we figured we would have a good amount of time to go bike to a few peoples homes and let the food settle a bit so we would have room to eat again at 7... but we got a text from our investigator a little before 5:30 saying dinner was ready early and we should come over! Oh man did we panic haha. So we went over to their house and even though we were stuffed beyond belief, we somehow managed to eat a full helping there too and some desert. I was probably the fullest I've been in my whole life haha. It was a great day! Unfortunately though because of the holiday almost everyone was out of town, most of the members and a lot of our investigators, so we had a hard time finding people to meet with and it made for a really slow week, but still a good one! The new Sister in our district to take the place of the Temple Square Sister who just went back to her mission, is Sister Evans, who we don't know very much about yet but we are glad to welcome her to our district! So overall it was a really good week here! It's definitely time to bust out the winter gear! I hope everyone has had a great thanksgiving week wherever you are!

Email to Mom 11/20

Hey Mom!
Thank you guys so much for the package! I got it just last night and it was such a sweet surprise! I had no idea that all my favorite snacks just happen to be fall colors haha I'm really glad that worked out the way it did because it's full of all stuff I love :) No snow here as of yet but hopefully soon! Elder Skinner is a great guy, he's taught me lots of new tricks on the bike haha, me and him get along great because we have a very similar sense of humor. He is a little green around the edges but that is by no means a bad thing haha. We were reading in the missionary handbook the other day and it said that we have to be sure to not much personal information like the names of our investigators publicly known so I've got to start being a little more cautious about putting that kind of stuff into my mass emails that go up on the blog and just keep the names and details to you in personal emails haha :) The husband and wife we are teaching in the Sisters area now are named Katy and Marvin and man they are sweet! I got to impress them with my Spanish a little bit because they are south american haha. We got to have some fun demonstrating all the different people and languages we run into here too haha I know just a few words in each of: Spanish, Twi, Creol, Hindi, Punjabi, Korean, German, and Chinese haha. Mostly just how to say hello and strike people's interest in talking to us but still it's cool to be in one of the most diverse places in the world :) Michelle told me a bit about Pa's surgery too, I'm glad to hear he's recovering well! I'm very jealous that you guys get to go up there for thanksgiving though haha. Especially about the pies, they sound awesome! I have never heard of banoffee pie but it sounds incredible! As far as Christmas stuff goes I'm not really sure haha. I am definately in need of more socks, all of mine have holes now haha, and little fun things to play with during like mornings, lunches, or evenings are always fun haha. A light jacket would be sweet too, because my one right now is just a super heavy one haha, so when it's not super cold I just sweat in it then I get super cold haha. Just like a light windbreaker like that brown one I had back home :) I'm fine with anything though as always haha :) I can't wait to get to skype with you guys though! That will be awesome! Well I've got to get running, I sure do love and miss you lots Mom! Give Dad and Shell my love too!

Great Week Here in Centreville 1st!

Sorry for the delayed email, we spent our P-day yesterday up in DC with our district and we ended up being there the whole day haha so we got permission from our Zone leaders to email today instead. We had planned to be home in time to still email but we totally forgot that the time we would be heading back was right in the middle of rush hour (which starts pretty early here) so the train and bus ride were both super packed and backed up haha. The trip went well though, it was one of the Sisters in the District's last p-day here in DC South because she is a Temple Square Sister and was just here temporarily, so she requested we go up to DC as a district. We ended up going through first The Holocaust Museum (which was super depressing but a good experience, don't think I'll ever do that again), then we went to the Washington Monument, then the WW2 Memorial, then the Lincoln Memorial, then the White House, then Chinatown, then the Capital building (which was closed unfortunately so we didn't get to take a tour or anything, they were renovating some things for the inauguration), then we went to the Museum of the American Indian to finish off the day. The American Indian Museum ended up being super lame though, or maybe I just had my hopes in the wrong place haha, I was hoping to see and read about lots of stuff from like the Mayans, Incas, and Aztecs, and be able to draw some comparisons and similarities between theirs and Nephite/Lamanite traditions in the Book of Mormon, but the museum was all about the Modern American Indians and didn't have anything about their ancestors haha. Like I said though, it was a really good week here in Centreville! We have been having more and more lessons progressively these past few weeks and have been getting pretty close to our Area's standard we would like to be at each week. Almost all of the success this past week though came from referrals from members. The biggest one being from a lady who lives somewhere over in Leesburg (like 45 minutes out of our area) who works with a friend who has been going through some personal issues lately and was asking this woman (the Member) how she could find some comfort from all of this stuff, well the Member suggested that we could come to her house and give her friend a Priesthood Blessing of comfort and that would help. Her friend accepted and invited us over but said that she might not be too interested in learning about our church or taking the missionary lessons. Well we met with her on Sunday evening and talked with her and her husband for probably just a little over an hour about the Restoration of the Gospel, they just had question after question and seemed very interested in it all, then finally we closed with giving both of them blessings and they said they would like to have us over again sometime to learn more and that they would like to take a trip up to the Temple Visitor's Center with us and their friends sometime soon as well! It was awesome! We will probably have to lest the Sisters teach them instead though because they are in their area instead of ours it turns out :( but still it will be great that they are having the missionaries over! Plus one of the people we have been teaching is starting to progress very well! She has been having a few things hold her back from feeling ready to be Baptized but she has said that she would really like to be Baptized when she feels ready. We had a lesson with her on Saturday though and she said that she would pray about a goal to help her self be ready by and that we could help her reach. Well top make it even more awesome, she came with us to Stake Conference the next day and the whole conference was about praying for answers and receiving personal revelation! In particular President Riggs spoke at the conference and talked about how if we want answers we have to go into it with the intent to act on whatever answer we get! Of course whenever he would say things along those lines I made sure to sort of nudge her to give a hint haha, she got a kick out of that, but we really think she will start progressing well. It's the same woman Elder Cluff and I had met a month or 2 back who has a less active boyfriend and invited us over for dinner out of the blue, so really it's been a miracle filled little journey for her all throughout! Well I wish I had more time to write but I've got to get going! It was a great week here! I hope everyone has had a great week wherever each of you are! I love and miss you all lots!