Jan 4th letter

Anyways, this week was pretty interesting we had a lot of cool miracles and a lot of fun finding experiences! We biked super far to south west d.c. one morning to hold an appointment with a guy down there, that's like a 30 minute bike ride going down hill, super far but definitely worth it! We met a guy named Jose who had spoken with sister missionaries at the festival of lights and was fairly interested. He was even interested enough to give himself a conditional baptismal invitation. He said, after reading this if I like it I may just take the step and become a member. Haha it was cool to see how he was just asking about church and looking for a community and family that he could really be apart of. Unfortunately he didn't come to church, the whole New Year's eve thing really destroyed our church attendance. Half of the members of the branch weren't there and we only got one investigator there... The rest were still sleeping off their late night parties... Apparently in the Hispanic culture New Year's Eve is just about as big as Christmas, haha we of course were still sleeping by 10:30.

Man, Jessica's mission sounds pretty sweet, you guys got a party! We were told to be in by 7:00 to get off the streets in D.C. unless we had a teaching appointment, luckily we had a teaching appointment :).

Oh, definitely the highlight of the week would be that [our newly baptized member] was confirmed! Man, he's super faithful. He worked until 4:00 in the morning on the day of church and we had to go into his apartment and shake him awake to come to church at 10, but he got up, came, and received the Holy Ghost. Super faithful, probably more faithful than a lot of the members in our branch unfortunately. We've also begun to teach the Father of an active family who have been members for 14 years, and the father isn't. He says he's Catholic but that he likes the church more than the Catholic one. He says he doesn't want to be baptized because his 92 year old mother would be super sad. ... He's a really cool guy and he's just missing out on so many blessings that he could have if he would just make the decision!

Haha oh we had this one super funny experience, kind of, haha we went to the [visitor center] with [the man who was just baptized] but we had to bus and metro it. This was the first time in my life I'd ever taken a bus, except for in Taiwan, so it's pretty cool. But we get to the bus stop and we're waiting and waiting because it was supposed to come at 4:36. We'd been waiting for a good half hour when another bus comes, yeah turns out the other bus doesn't run on the holiday schedule. So we get on the bus that came because it was going to go pretty close by the temple, or so said the driver. He drops us off at a stop which I know is relatively close to the temple but it's still like a 20 minute walk. So we start walking and as we walk we notice all these signs where we're walking that say they're stops for the bus we were just on! Yeah, not sure if he just wanted to make us walk in the cold because we were missionaries or what, but we ended walking like 20 minutes in the cold ... Haha it was alright though because he loves the [visitor center] and the spirit he feels there. His words were "Cuando no puedo ir, cuanto deseo ir!" "When I can't go, how much I desire to go!" Haha super cool!

Other cool highlights of the week, I had my first District meeting, haha that was really weird. It was weird to plan it all seeing as I've been used to showing up and just receiving the info, but it was good, and it was cool to be able to receive inspiration on how to help the district grow. It turned out fairly well and I think everyone was able to learn some things that will hopefully make us all better missionaries. Oh, and it has finally gotten cold! Yeah, super cold, riding bikes with an arctic wind and snow was pretty interesting yesterday! But as you all know I happen to love epic things, so it was sweet! :)

It was a good week, though we're still sifting through investigators. Hopefully we can find some solid ones! Oh, we did teach [the lady who had a lot of concerns] again though. She started reading in the Book of Mormon again and was very changed. We read Alma 32:32-34 and I think it may have scared her. She was asking about life after death and second chances and such, hopefully the eternal perspective will help her see that God really is just trying to help us with his commandments, not restrict us.

The work is still great, super fun, and tiring! Haha but it's awesome, it's been fun to work with Elder Sterr so far as well, he's grown a lot in the last couple of weeks!