January 5, 2015

Dear Family and Friends,                  Monday, January 5, 2015 at 12:00 (noon) (PST)

wow, this week has been similar to last week in the fact that we have not gotten much done... but what we have gotten done has been awesome! it has been really foggy here lately. sometimes we cannot see 50 yards away. Thank you to all of those thinking of me back at home. Well, this has been my week...
 
Monday - Preparation day!! we went to mcdonalds for lunch. As a zone we played basketball, soccer, and mafia! (a zone is how missionaries are divided. we are divided into small groups called districts, districts have 6-8 missionaries in it. then zones have 2-3 districts in it.) 
Tonight we had a lesson.  We taught about tithing and fast offerings. she was fine with paying tithing. we then talked about the word of wisdom and how she needs to stop drinking coffee before this saturday if she wants to be baptized on the 17th.  Tonight we did exchanges with the district leader. I went to Forrest Home with Elder Livingston (district leader) and Elder Smith came here with Elder Williams.
 
Tuesday - today we had district meeting. after district meeting Elder Livingston and I (and a few other Elders) helped some people move. After that we had district lunch. this is Elder Goudy's last district lunch, so we let him decide where it go. he wanted sushi. we all got teriyaki chicken at a place next to the sushi place and was planning on eating in the sushi place with Elder Goudy. when we tried to enter the sushi place, when of the workers saw we were bringing food from another restaurant, she crossed her arms and said "NO FOOD!" we ended up leaving and letting Elder Goudy go in by himself and order to go. We all ended up eating at the church. After that Elder Livingston and I taught a recent convert. He was a cool guy. We taught him the ten commandments.
 
Wednesday - Today Elder Williams and i taught a recently reactivated member family.   We taught them the restoration and talked about Their son getting baptized. he wants to be baptized, but they have not figured out when yet. After lunch we taught a lesson.  We taught them some commandments.  After that we had a lesson and we read some out of the Book of Mormon with him. He is recently baptized. 

Today is new years eve, so we went to the forrest home missionaries apartment and had a little missionary get together. we went to bed at 11:00.
 
Thursday - today we had lunch with the Wrights. they have aparently lived in Montrose before (a while ago) and know people who are in the spring creek ward. 

Today we also dropped off some cookies and wished them a happy new year. tonight we had dinner with A family.  He served his mission in Japan and cooked us Japanize curry and rice. For new years he also served us other japanize stuff like rice candy, dried seaweed, squid jerkey, wasabi peas, and other interesting stuff.
 
Friday - Today was weekly planning. that took till dinner. After dinner we talked a family about taking the lessons.   [ ;) ]  ).
 
Saturday - We dropped off some cookies and wished her a happy new year. her and her family are not members, but know all about the gospel. they have not been baptized just because they feel like they do not have time to be members of the church. We had a lesson planned today, but he was not home. We went to dinner today at Olive Gardens today because we did not have a meal set up and Elder Williams wanted to treat me to a good meal. Olive Gardens is more expensive than I remember (Elder Williams was paying). After dinner we planned for a Sunday school lesson we were asked to give tomorrow (everyone here asks us to cover their class if they are gone [ :( ]  ).
 
Sunday - having two wards is fun... church from 11:00 to 4:00. We taught the 17-18 year old sunday school class in grass valley ward.     We had Grass Valley missionary correlation today after church (just a meeting about missionary work). Tonight we taught a lesson.  We had decided that we should talk to him about baptism sometime in the lesson, but while teaching him the restoration it never really came up. after the lesson.  He asked us if we were going to set up a baptism. i was thinking "ahh... is he okay with that?" what we really said is something like, "have you talked about baptism." they answered yes and confirmed that he wanted to be baptized. we set up Feburary 14th as the day of his baptism!! that was really cool!!
 
Elder Casey Jensen