Welp, here it is! . Happy New Year!

So last Monday we played basketball with President Toone's sons and sons-in-law. Fairly needless to say, they were all GIANT and really good at basketball. I'm still pretty terrible, so I wasn't much help to any of the teams I was on. It was still pretty fun nonetheless. We also "played" soccer with all President's grand kids which if you ask me was much more fun than basketball. Me playing soccer with those kids was probably a lot like those huge dudes playing basketball with me. Anyway, I got some pictures of it! Finally...

So other big news is that we put Shane on date! Woooot! We had a Skype lesson with him because he is in Nebraska or something for the break. We went over to a member's house and had a sweet lesson about the gospel. We invited him to be baptized on January 24th and he says, "Yeah that sounds great." Simple enough I guess! Yesterday he asked us what Kolob was so who knows where he got that from... but either way he's getting baptized.

We had another lesson with Gabe in which we invited him to be baptized AGAIN. Usually he tells us yes in a roundabout sort of way, but this time he flat out told us that he feels if he was baptized now that it would diminish the significance of his previous baptism. So finally the real concern comes out and we were able to talk to him about the Priesthood, etc. etc. and we're still going to work really hard with him to help him progress. As of right now, he'll probably just keep coming to church for a few years even if he never gets baptized. I guess he has sort-of a non-denominational outlook that he knows that Joseph Smith was a prophet, the Book of Mormon is true, the Church is true, BUT that other churches can be true too. So that's what we're working with. Pray for him!

With Jeffrey, we've been teaching him for a while but for whatever reason haven't invited him to be baptized! It was driving us crazy -- probably the Spirit constraining us -- but we couldn't figure out why. Well we had a lesson Saturday and found a solid fellowship for him. Invited him to be baptized and --BAM-- he said yes... but after he reads the whole Book of Mormon... so we'll see. Anyway, the fellowship is the people that we have dinner with every Sunday and they invited him over and he came yesterday! So hopefully that'll be key in his conversion by making new friends and such. Good stuff.

My companion has gotten on a real family history streak... have any of you RM's used family history as a finding tool? We're trying to figure it out to try something new. Elder Erikson found some sweet stories about his ancestors like guarding the Prophet Joseph's house, healing people, and crazy stuff like that. Pretty cool stuff. We're hoping the Spirit of Elijah can just push people into the font. We'll see how it goes!

Welp, that's all this week family. Until next time!

-Elder Cox