What's up?!  It's a chilly 52 degrees here in Phoenix, AZ (ha!) and Christmas is on the way!

 

Truth be told?  I completely forgot that it was Christmas time.  A Mexican guy said "Feliz Navidad" to me the other day and I was like... "Oh yeah!".... It's Christmas!  I forgot!  Pretty sweet!  Super excited to talk to mi familia this week!  

 

Baptisms this week!  Well I guess just one.  Another nine year old baptism.  She's super super smart and just absorbs everything we teach.  She's going to be a rocket scientist or something.  Super nuts.  We just have to work out some logistical details and we're all set for another baptism this week.  Woo woo!  She lives with a member family who more or less adopted her and they're one of the really strong families in the Phoenix area.

 

We also put someone on date for baptism for the following week!  We met this super neat-o family that is going to be super legit.  The mother has family that's all LDS and has been pushing this for a while, and the Dad-guy has a little bit of religious background, but just loves it.  He loves the Book of Mormon too!  We read with them last night and they really understand the importance of the gospel and everything.  He says that it just makes sense that if we had prophets before, that we'd have prophets now, etc.  Super good family.  They came to church too!  Just when we think they wouldn't show up, BAM, there they are!  Apparently they had a good experience even though the bread for the sacrament was late and...etc.  All good though.  We'll keep working with them for the next couple of weeks and baptize the heck out of them.  They have 6 kids.  We only thought they had like 2.  We saw them in church and was like, holy cow, they... they have a lot of kids.  They even said they want to feed us some time!  Boo ya!  Member dinners in this ward are few and far between!  Luckily I have food storage fit for a king and, for example, we didn't eat dinner yesterday because we were just... Busy.  Didn't have time.  Funny how that works!  Still fat though.  Plenty fat. 

 

So I get a call on...Wednesday, from the Assistants to the President.  Elder Jurgensmeier, one of the guys I lived with in my first area, says "Elder Cox, we're having our Mission Leadership Conference tomorrow and we have people from Salt Lake coming down to do some training.  President Toone is inviting some other people to attend as well, and he wants you to be there."  Uhh... okay.  What the heck?  He then tells me that it's just me going, and not even my companion.  Uhh...okay.  What the heck?  So I get off the phone and tell Elder Wilcox, who happens to be a District Leader, that I'm going to this Mission Leadership Conference tomorrow but that he's staying and working the area.  Thought comes to my mind:  Wait, Elder Wilcox and Cox are pretty similar names.  So I text the AP's and ask them, "Did you mean Elder Wilcox?".  Nope.  Elder Cox.  What happened is that Brother Donaldson, who is in the Missionary Committee (or something) over the Church, essentially was coming to our mission to absolutely nuke everything that we've been doing and change some things.  Apparently he wanted a bunch of the "younger" missionaries to be there so that this training wouldn't be given to people that are going to leave the mission in a few months.  In any case, it was super crazy and confusing.  Really I guess it wasn't a "nuke", but they did change a lot of things.

 

Hmm...Welp...

See you on Christmas!

 

-Elder Cox