Happy 2009!

City of Providence

Rhode Island snow

Jan. 5, 2009 email:

Things are still a bit slow here because of the holiday season. All but 2 of our investigators have put us on hold until all settles down. We've been trying to use new, creative ways to find people. One is to do family history tracting, meaning we talk about genealogy instead of sharing a message of the Restoration. We've tried it down in Barrington, which is primarily older, retired couples. It's gone over quite well! They are more willing to listen to us when we talk about family history. We also volunteer at the seniors' center in Barrington so we've shared a bit about family history with them there. One lady wants us to come over and help her out with it. Yay! Once we get them started on that, we can share why families are so important to our Heavenly Father's plan. We've also tried other random subjects because we've had LOTS of time to tract & try new things out.

Our New Year's celebration was just like any other day. We went to bed at the usual 10:30 and slept right through the new year. We had some confetti poppers that another missionary left behind so we took advantage of that in the morning. This was also a day of lots of food. We ended up having a meal appointment for brunch, lunch, & dinner. Boy, were we stuffed! And they weren't all with members; one with a member, another less-active, and the other an investigator.

For my big 22nd birthday [Jan. 3], we took our break at the infamous Johnny Rockets diner. YUM! They sell mainly hamburgers, which are very yummy! And their onion rings are amazing. The rest of our break was spent shopping along Thayer street. It's quite the lively place even though Brown University is out for break. We didn't get to make my birthday brownies on the 3rd because of fast Sunday, but we made them today so we can share with the Elders at our Preparation Day activities.

We had a wonderful fast & testimony meeting yesterday in the Central Falls ward. They are such a humble group of Saints and their testimonies are so strong. The ward mission leader, Bro. Barbosa, shared his testimony of missionary work and how we all need to share the wonderful blessings that we have because of the gospel. He only speaks Portuguese so we had it translated into English by the 2nd counselor in the bishopric. The testimony that hit me the most was by a girl who was home from BYU for the Christmas break. She spoke of her singles' ward in Utah and how she would take Central Falls over that one any day. She had seen the struggles of the Central Falls members and their commitment to the gospel had strengthened her. It's hard to put in words the power by which she spoke. It was awesome!

That's about all of the exciting things that have happened this week besides the big dump of snow we got. Ugh! Will it ever end?! I hear there's another one on the way so I guess I can just bundle up and get out to work. I'm going to try to attach some pictures that I've taken recently. One is the sunset over the Atlantic Ocean & the snowy beach. I took it last night while in Barrington. It's so beautiful!

Well, I wish everyone the best back home. Stay outta trouble & keep doing those things that Heavenly Father has asked us to do. That's where we find the greatest happiness & peace in life!