Dec. 8

It's been a good week! We had a lot more productive of a week than the last few have been. We've been working hard and praying for more people to teach and we got some! Always good. We had something like 6 referrals this week, which is quite a few!

Let's see. This week we had our zone conference. It was pretty good, and the analogy was made between missionary work and war. The sense that we're fighting a battle and we need to be exactly obedient and what-not in order to conquer the forces of Satan. It was a pretty good training! A lot of times when President gets at the podium he's renown for making corrections. Like... every single training I've ever been in since last year he's done that. He really doesn't like to do that, so I guess he's trying to change his game a little bit. Anyway, it was nice to actually hear him teach and testify of different things. Living with the AP's, they got us psyched up for it by telling us he was going to delve into the scriptures for like 2 straight hours. Unfortunately, for our zone he ran out of time before he got to that. In any case, it was good. We have a missionary in the mission that served in Afghanistan and got his legs "swiss-cheesed" by a road-bomb. He now uses a cane, etc, but for the whole war analogy they had him going around to all the zones and talking about his experiences. It was pretty cool!

Okay, another awesome thing that happened this week was with a lesson we had with Jodie. She's REALLY hot and cold when it comes to the Gospel and her testimony. Well last week happened to be a "cold" one, so we had a lesson with her on Wednesday. Jodie's lessons are such that she invites her own "Member-Presents" to help us teach, so that's cool. She invited this guy named Thomas that is in one of the other YSA's on campus, the AP's ward, actually. The AP's warned us that Thomas would completely hijack our lesson if we didn't tell him exactly what to say. Honestly, we didn't really know what to say either so we were planning on letting him. So we did. In the lesson we got about 5 words in, and Thomas just went off for like over an hour. Now, usually my experiences with members hijacking lessons are terrible ones, but this was actually way legit. Long story short... his testimony of the Savior was way awesome and Jodie was completely content after. Not only that, but Elder Erikson and I both agreed that it was even more spiritually edifying than Zone Conference was. It was very refreshing, and one of the most powerful lessons of my mission. Can't really... describe it other than that, but you get the point.

We got a new investigator named Jeffrey! He was a referral from a member in a different ward, his cousin or something. Jeffrey has been around Mormons his whole life, a lot of his family members are Mormon, he's gone to Mormon church several times, and knows a bunch about it. Anyway, Jeffrey wants to settle down, get to know and socialize with the right kind of people. He came to the right place! We have only had two lessons with him so far, but they've been good ones. I bet he'll be super solid!

We took Gabe to the Mesa Temple Visitors Center to watch Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration. It was like... way legit. He still wants to talk more with his parents about baptism, so it probably won't happen until after Christmas break, which starts this week. Apparently during break, instead of having 3 wards on campus, it turns into 1 Sacrament meeting where we all just combine. We'll see how that goes. Pray for me to stay in this area, pretty please? I really don't want to go. This is my 2nd consecutive transfer here too, and I've never thus far spend longer than 2 consecutive transfers in an area. I'm pretty superstitious.

Oh yeah! We have a new kid named Shane! Ok seriously, he's super solid! He met with missionaries in High School, had a baptismal date, and just... ended up not being baptized. Just fell through the cracks! Funny story, so we met Shane at an FHE when he was chilling with a member named Andrea. That was a couple weeks ago. Last week we got a referral from other missionaries for this kid named Skyler. We give Skyler a call and set up an appointment for right after last FHE. So we're waiting after FHE and Shane comes up to us with Andrea and just starts talking to us and stuff, we recognize him from the FHE that we met him at before. We give Shane a Book of Mormon and we're like man, where is this Skylar kid? He's not texting us back. Shane is about to leave so we grab his number from him and plug it in the phone. We realize that... we had already been calling and texting Shane, because apparently Shane and Skyler are the same person. SUPER CONFUSING. Anyway... he's legit. Probably didn't make sense but... that's alright.

Anywho, that's all folks! Love y'all!

-Elder Cox