Week 26

Hey Everybody!

So transfer calls came last night, and I am OUT. I wasn't expecting it and it will be really hard leaving Springville, but it is what it is. I'm being sent to Geneseo, which apparently is a little bit more populated than Springville. Springville was in the bottom left of the mission, and now I'm going to the center-rightish of the mission, below Rochester. A change will definitely be interesting.

 

So this week was supposed to be super packed and busy with teaching and then it wasn't. All of our appointments fell through. We were still busy with other things, just not the stuff we wanted to be busy with. It's all good though! Some weeks are just like that. 

 

So on Friday our branch had our "Chinese auction". Sister Barts, the lady I had a picture with, puts it on every year, and pretty much everybody brings stuff that they don't want to the church, and everybody gets raffle tickets and you put tickets in the cups next to the items you want, and then they just draw to see who wins. so there's actually no money involved, and I ended up winning a sweet hat that looks like the one Walter White wears in Breaking Bad. There was also a rooster up for auction but I didn't win it.

 

On Sunday, we went up to Amherst for training and then a fireside. The training was about helping members create mormon.org profiles, so that's another thing that we will be doing with our ipads. That should be fun.

 

Anyway, I think that's about it. I should have a lot to report next week with changing areas and stuff. Alright, cya later!

 

Love, Elder Holt

Week 25

Yo!

Man this transfer went by so fast. We only have one week 'till transfer calls. My companion thinks I'll be out but I think I'll stay in Springville one more. I've spent the first fourth of my mission here, this place is like home.

 

This week was pretty slow though. Most of our investigators just couldn't meet with us, and we had stuff going on in Arcade so we were out of our area for a couple days. We really want to make this last week good in case we're not together next transfer, so this week should be filled.

 

We were able to see Ray again this week. We went to breakfast with him on Saturday. He couldn't come to church this week but we should be able to see him a couple times this week. 

 

Well the winter is starting to calm down! It was in the 20's all week this week. I was able to wear my short sleeve shirts which I haven't been able to do for the last 3 months. I'm really looking forward to Spring, because all we can do on p-days around here is bowl and it is literally sucking my money away. On the bright side, I have gotten a lot better at bowling. I'm looking forward to when its warm enough to play sports though

. 

Well...I don't really know what else to say. Everything has been pretty low key lately, and nothing crazy has happened to us. I've suddenly started putting on weight though so that's a new development. I might come home fat just yet. Oh I forgot! so last night we were at the Owens for dinner, and they have missionaries do the "hot sauce challenge" and then video tape us doing it. Brother Owens bought this insanely hot, hot sauce 7 years ago, and he made us all do the challenge. He put some on a spoon and we all took it, and at first the kick wasn't that bad and I could handle it pretty well, but then after a minute my hands and feet started going numb, and also my face, and then I started getting dizzy, ha ha. It was ridiculous. I thought I could handle hot things but apparently not.

 

'till next week

Love, Elder Holt

Week 24

Hey!

It's been a couple of weeks. Nothing really happened the past two weeks, but this week was sweet!

 

On Thursday we got our ipads! Woo! We had a 3 hour training on them, but it will take a while to get used to them. We are supposed to not be using our daily planners within a week, but I really don't think that we can do that, because there is stuff that we write down in our planners that we don't have a spot to record in the "Area Book" app. The app is pretty sweet though. It decides automatically whether an investigator is progressing or just an "other" by the data we enter in for that person. We pretty much never have to use paper ever again for anything. The ward list is on there, and instead of printing out giant maps and color coding less actives and things like that, we can just go into google maps and enter in all the addresses of people. It is seriously the bomb. It helps us be wayyyyy more on top of things because we have to record what happened in lessons the same day it happened, and we have to make sure to record everything because numbers are reported automatically through the app. It'll make us be better missionaries though because we're more accountable!

 

On Friday, we got a call from Ray. He's the guy we almost slammed into, back at the beginning of January, and we towed his truck out. Anyway, we haven't been able to get in contact with him since then, but he called us on Friday and said he had some wood he needed stacked. We went that night because he wanted to show us what to do, and we ended up talking for a while about a lot of different things. The next day we came back with the other Elders from Arcade, and we stacked all the wood he had into his garage. The wood was covered in snow so it was hard to kind of find it all. Anyway, we invited him to church thinking he was just gonna be like "oh, I can't" but he was like "yah of course! give me all the info". Then he came to church the next day. I was pretty stoked because I haven't had an investigator at church my whole mission. All of our investigators either don't have a car or are scared to drive in the snow (even though they have lived in new york their whole lives). 

 

I think Ray liked it. He stayed for sacrament meeting and then had to leave. That might have been good though because people in our gospel principles class have a habit of getting into deep, deep doctrine that has nothing to do with a gospel "principle". Anyway, we are excited about him. I think thats about it for this week. I hope everybody's doing good! Ladies are welcome to send me valentines day packages.

 

Love, Elder Holt