Email from 12/29/08

Things are going really good here, we are getting ready to wrap up the month and the year in the zone and mission so we are super busy with paper work and getting goals ready for the 2009 year, our mission has changed soo much in just one year, it is really neat everything that is happening, i am excited for our zone leader council this weekend in orlando, as we review our goals and outcome from 2008, i am excited for what 2009 is going to hold!
I love the Christmas season, i just get frustrated with the work during it! The week of Christmas is soo hard to set return appts to teach people, because all of them say "after the holidays", so this week should be really really good for all of the appointments we set! Last night we taught a big group of spanish guys and we set two baptismal dates for january! We have alot more dates to set for this coming month, so things are looking really good for this next transfer! Speaking of next transfer, we got transfer calls this last saturday and Elder OBrien is leaving, he is being released as a zone leader and is going to southern orlando, it was crazy how fast this transfer went by, when i look back to this transfer it is going to be like a blink! I found out that my new companion is Elder Green :-) this will be his first transfer as a zone leader, so it will be fun going through the ropes with him, i have never met him or even seen him before, so tomorrow i get to meet him! But President told me that he is a solid missionary and that he is on fire right now! So things are going to be awesome this transfer!

Merry Christmas!

email from 12/15/08

Things are going great here, there was a spanish family that showed up last week at the spanish branch, so i set up an appointment to go back and teach them this week, and when we went there, we started talking about the restoration and the book of mormon, and he pulled out his own copy that missionaries had given him a long time ago and told me that he had read all of first and second Nephi, and he knows that it is true! Then he asked me what he has to do to be baptized! It was amazing! Ivan has been soo prepared by the lord! He wants to be baptized on Christmas Eve but we dont know yet, hopefully it will follow through, if not then, it will be short after, I love the power of the Book of Mormon! I recently started over again and it amazes me how much new things you learn everytime! I love it, if people would just humble themselves and pray about it they would know!
We have some awesome christmas activities going on in the ward, last saturday we had the ward christmas party and we had about 5 investigators show up! It was awesome, they asked us to be shepherds, and they made us sing a duet:-( oh well, this ward has alot of extremely talented musicians, so they made up for it!

bits and pieces from 12/01/08

We had a good week, we ended up eating three thanksgiving dinners, and i thought that i was going to die, but we still worked really hard, we didnt want missionaries just turning thanksgiving into a lolligag day so we challenged the entire zone to see who could talk to the most people on thanksgiving day, and we ended up with 88 contacts, it was pretty fun getting soo excited over everyone in sight! The zone is doing really really good, we are looking at reaching numbers for the month of December with soo many dates than cocoa has had in such a long time at least a couple of years! It is going to be exciting! We have two baptisms this saturday with a part member family that we have been working with since before i got here, but they are finally ready, and they are sooo excited, there names are Jonathan and Daniel Hayasaka! They are a great family, it is going to be really good! This week we had the Turkey Trot Run for the JDRF foundation that a bunch a church members put on, and there were about 470 runners, it was intense, some ran like it was the olympics, we just helped out wherever we could, it wasnt sooo much that they needed our help as much as it was a good opportunity for missionary work and people recoginizing us from such a good cause!This week Pres and Sis Darrington came and spoke in our ward, and everytime they speak in a ward they get members even more excited about missionary work, and they generated about 50 referrals, so that was really exciting! It is really nice in this ward, the members really trust us with their nonmember friends and family, and that is soo helpful!