Where the Lord Wants Me

Wednesday we spent some time in Hartford doing stop bys and then spent some time in Wethersfield and then did stop bys in New Britain in the evening. We spent dinner with the Rodriguez family and shared a powerful message about Christmas and the prophecies of Christ and how it tied into their family. After all that, we drove to the south side of Newington to pick up food from Sister Thomas. Sister Thomas is a cool lady that can’t feed us dinners, so she buys us food every month! So we have loaves of bread, eggs, milk, onions, and a lot of other good things in our kitchen, and a lot of them! She is awesome! She’s also super straightforward, which is a great quality that we love!

Thursday was filled with Weekly Planning, which went pretty well, but was a little tough since we weren’t able to meet with a ton of our investigators the past week, but it all worked out! We stopped by Angella Dennis’ house, the media referral that we taught the Restoration to last Friday, and she wasn’t home, but her mother was, so we told them that we would stop by tonight with a large copy of the Bible and Book of Mormon. After Angella, we went to visit a guy named Jordan. He has had a tough life, a lot of addiction as well, but is fighting back and is getting so close to being clean. He told us about how the Book of Mormon has changed his life, and after he fell out of the church for a while, he is actually sharing the Book of Mormon with others and is being a missionary to those who need help and assistance. He is really cool and wants to do the right things, and we are super proud of him. He also wants to start coming back to church, so stay tuned on that next week! After Jordan we visited Grandpa for a bit and helped him clean up his house more. Elder McIntyre tackled the fridge and was able to find a lot of things that were past their expiration date and threw them out, which we are hoping will help Grandpa’s health! He also came to church again this week, which is a good sign that he is still making it out of the house well! That night, we had splits with Brother Buck and saw a less active lady who hasn’t been to church in a while and then went to New Britain and gave a blessing to a family, or gave blessing to the members in the family. It was a really warming and sweet experience.

Friday was “Christmas Adam” (the day before Christmas Eve)…and was District Meeting! It was a little less formal since the Zone Leaders were in Boston, but it was still good! Elder Hall (who is really like my 7th cousin and not my 3rd) gave a training on Finding through our own efforts and how we can be more human while contacting. We practiced with random items and missionaries having to come up to us and start human conversations with us. It was really cool and really fun! It gave me a lot more confidence in talking to people! After District Meeting, we ran down to New Britain to put up flyers for a lady the Sisters know (a less active) who actually lives in our ward. It was pretty dark outside, but the Lord protected us from anything that would have gone bad, so we were ok 🙂 After that, we tried to run to find a media referral we had just gotten, but we couldn’t get into the building, so we drove all the way back up to West Hartford. The Hernandez family is awesome! Lorena is a member, Amy, their daughter, is a Less Active, and Lou is not a member. Amy wasn’t there, so we just had dinner with Lorena and Lou. After dinner, we had a super sweet lesson with them about the experiences in the Bible and the Book of Mormon around Christmas. The Spirit was there and it was cool to see Lou participate. He also asked if we had any movies for him to watch, and we watched Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration with him!!

Saturday was Christmas Eve, and we caroled in the morning at a nursing home in Bloomfield, then we went to the Neptins for appetizers and had a great conversation over food there, and then had dinner with the Perez family and the other four elders were there, and at the end, we shared a short message about Christmas and how it impacts our lives. That night, we had to be inside by 7, so we chilled at the other elders apartment and had a blast!

Christmas was amazing! We had church in the morning, after opening presents of course, which were the best, and then saw Jacob Locke, who is the best, and then went to FaceTime our family, which was the best part of the day. It was filled with some tears, but was so sweet to see them. I love my family and nothing can separate us. We spent a good time at the Biggers and made a huge jenga tower, which was taller than me! That night, we spent the rest of the evening with the Weber family, who took us in, showed us a BYU show called Winter Thaw, which I highly recommend, and then we had TurDuckEn wrapped in Bacon for dinner!!!! It was super super good, and really interesting 🙂 Dessert was great too! The ward here has really been taking care of us and I think I have never received more presents and blessings than this Christmas. The Lord and His children take care of the Lord’s servants and it was a really awesome blessing to be able to be out here in the field during this time. I love you all and hope and pray that you will make the Savior the center of your life. How long will it take before you make Him the center of your being and of your activities every day? The only thing stopping you from receiving His matchless and innumerable blessings is yourself. D&C19:23 I love you all! Have a great New Year and I will talk to you next year!!