December Emails

December 5, 2011

Hello Family!

Well, with the weeks rapidly winding down, it gets harder to focus, but I am determined to finish strong. Elder Nelson and I have been setting up appointments like crazy for this coming week, so far we have 19 set up, and seven of those are with investigators! If everything goes as planned, we should pick up nine or ten new investigators this week, that would be awesome. I can just see Heavenly Father allowing all these appointments to cancel though hahaha just so He can test me. It's the hardest to stay focused when we have nothing to do, especially during weekly planning and stuff, it's awful.

But! I am doing well. This week was pretty long. We had LTMs in Lethbridge this week on Tuesday and Wednesday. While we were at LTMs the fire alarm in the church went off and we couldn't continue the meeting with it squealing, so we all just sat around and sang Christmas hymns until someone came to turn it off hahaha. That was cool. President sat in as Elder Riddle and I role-played something called How to Begin Teaching. It went so well! President said it was a perfect example and couldn't get over how good it was. Neither could we! He's serving out in Creston right now so we just pulled something out of our hats and it was so good. That was cool.

Sister Baril asked Elder Nelson and I to sing at the 7th Ward's Christmas party this week so we sang "Tractin' in a Winter Wonderland" by VoiceMale. It was a hit! The Barils video-taped us do it at their home later, they should be sending you the video. It's...I don't know, it's kind of embarrassing, but whatever, the ward loved it, we have been hearing about it all week.

This weekend Raymond had their 14th Annual Old-Fashioned Christmas party, they shut down all of main street and held special sales at the two stores that line the street, Santa Claus came, they lit up the town Christmas tree, there was all kinds of stuff going on. It wasn't too hot for missionary work. But we did manage to set up some appointments, two with some potential investigators, Dillon tomorrow and Lauren on Friday.

We also got a hold of Alex and found out that he lost his job! The apartment he was living in was also part of the job, so since he lost his job he lost his place to stay. Sister Judy-Lee Jensen took him in, though, and hopefully he will stay around a bit longer. He's got to find a new job and there's not really much work here in Raymond so who knows what he'll do. When we met with him on Saturday we read through 3 Nephi 11 and he realized we were going to invite him to be baptized. He's not sure about baptism, but he now understands how important it is, especially since we read the scripture, "whoso believeth not in me, and is not baptized, shall be damned." He was pretty upset at first, he thought we were telling him that he was going to hell if he didn't get baptized, which, of course, is not the case at all. What does it mean to be damned? It means to be halted in one's progression. When he understood that, he opened right up and FINALLY realized how important it was to read the Book of Mormon. We invited him to take all of the discussions before making up his mind on this, which he agreed to, and then he went to church in the YSA ward yesterday, hopefully it went well.

When we met with Chris and Rachel this week we taught them about keeping the Sabbath day holy. Elder Nelson and I have really felt that that would help their lives tremendously. They said they would do their best, they came out to church yesterday, then we swung by their house later and both Elder Nelson and I felt a difference. The house was so much more peaceful, wow, I hope they recognized that. Rachel is still as stubborn and self-conscious as ever but she's coming along.

Also, Trey got the priesthood yesterday! He asked us if we would stand in the circle to ordain him, that was sweet. And, while we were there, his grandma, Ursula (or Sister Favel), introduced us to her sister, Petra, who isn't a member of the church but came to see Trey get ordained and now wants to learn more! We're meeting with her on Thursday. It was weird to stand in church yesterday and bear my testimony for the last time as a full-time missionary. I thought that day would never come. I'm giving a farewell talk on Sunday in 8th ward hahaha isn't that funny? They asked me to speak about Preach My Gospel. What a lame topic! Oh well. By the way, I don't have any stories for your talk, Mom, sorry.

On Monday we visited a family, I'm not sure if the man and woman are married or if they are living together, but this family just had two deaths and they said we could come by and teach them about the plan of salvation, so we'll be going there tonight, hopefully it goes well. The kids were really excited to have us come over, they've been thinking about taking seminary and they love going to church when they can (their mom makes them go to the Mennonite church), in fact, when we asked if we could come by they were nodding their heads and whispering 'Yes!' to their parents. Hahaha and it worked.

Oh yeah, and this week Brother Kesler took a leap of faith and started the stop smoking program! I'm pretty nervous about what's going to happen if he doesn't make it, I hope he doesn't recoil and not let us come over anymore because he feels like a failure. That would be bad. He can do it though! They are having us over for a farewell dinner on Sunday, that will be sweet. I hope we will keep in touch, then I can come up and go through the temple with them!

That's pretty much all for this week. I guess you'll hear from me again next week. LAST E-MAIL!!!! WHAT?!?!? I feel like I'm going to be a missionary forever. It's just weird that it's MY turn to come home

Love,
Elder Cevering