Hola
familia!
Thanks Omie and Papa and Danielle for the
letters! It's really fun to get to open letters and hear from you guys! And
thanks to the Gray family for the fun Thanksgiving package!! I thought it was
funny that all the turkeys were traced on people's left hands.... except
Maddy's :)
The other day I was
thinking about how cold it must be over there and how pale/pasty white all of
you must be.. Thankfully I don't have that problem!! The coldest it gets here
is about 50 degrees in the morning when we go running down by the river! It's
sunny almost all of the time, but the last couple days we've had rain!
Yesterday, we were
biking around and I had Maddy and Tenley's "harmony" to the song in
Annie stuck in my head! It was so annoying!! I seriously could not stop singing
it for hours!
Thanksgiving was so
much fun! We played football in the morning with a bunch of other elders in our
stake! It was so much fun! We had lunch with our homeshare's family. The house
is tiny and there were about twenty people stuffed in there! But it was a lot
of fun. We played croquet and Uno with one of her grandsons, who's ten and is a
lot of fun! Then we went over to the Brother and Sister Budica's home for
dinner! Dinner was supposed to start at 5:00, so we got there around 4:00 to
see if we could help out and then hang out for a little bit! We didn't start
eating until 6:50!! It was alright because there was a pool table and
Foosball so we were entertained! There were also a ton of people over at their
house so it reminded me of our family dinners with all the little kiddos!
So here's the story
behind the new haircut.. I wanted it shorter because I was tired of
having helmet hair all the time, but the lady who cut my hair went a little bit
shorter than I wanted.. But it's okay because it's growing back! Those pictures
I took were just in our back yard and down at the Santa Ana river where we go
running every morning!
The doctor I went to
see is a member so I didn't have to pay a copay for my visit with him. But I'm
going to take my prescription in today so I'll have to pay then!
This week our Zone
Leaders moved in with us because their homeshare had family coming to stay with
them over Thanksgiving. It's been super cramped but so much fun! They're moving
out on Wednesday, but they're still in our ward so we see them a lot! We
also went on exchanges with them while they were staying with us! This exchange
was a hundred times better than the last one! We didn't get to see everyone we
would have liked to, but we met with a lot of people!
So this weekend I got
a bit of a cold which was really annoying! It only lasted for a day, but now I
just have a dumb cough that won't go away! At first I was confused because I
thought that when I was set apart, I was promised that if I was obedient I
wouldn't get sick! But while I was thinking about it and trying to figure out
how I wasn't being obedient, I realized that I wasn't promised to not get sick,
but that I would have the strength to keep working! Which I did! I am also a
firm believer now that getting up and moving around while you're sick
definitely helps you heal faster! I've also discovered that I really love
naps... Lunch-time naps are now my favorite part of the day!!
On Sunday, Elder
Taylor spoke in sacrament meeting with one of the zone leaders, Elder Child.
All four of us sang "We'll Bring the World His Truth", and it went
really well! A couple of us were still a little sick, but thankfully we were
still able to sing!
We picked up a new
investigator this week! His name is Osh (his family is from Egypt) and he's
pretty cool. He lives with a less active lady who's in her 70's and helps take
care of her because she has bone cancer. We left him with a copy of the Book of
Mormon and taught him the Restoration and he soaked it all up! He's super
strong in his Greek Orthodox beliefs/background so that may be the only
struggle with him. He also has five pot-bellied pigs! On Thanksgiving he found
out that one of them was pregnant, so when we went back to visit, their were
six new baby pigs! They're so tiny!
We also picked up
another new investigator! His name's Rudy. We taught him about the Restoration
and how we can read/pray about the Book of Mormon and then the Spirit will tell
us that it's true. He says that he's felt the Spirit before in his life and he
wants to feel it again. I bore my testimony that if he read from the Book of
Mormon and prayed to our Heavenly Father, he would feel the brightness and
happiness that the Spirit brings! (He also has pigs, but these ones are
probably about the same size as Stubby! They're huge!)
Our other
investigators are kind of frustrating at this point. The one girl, Andrea, went
to Mexico for a month. She texted us a couple weeks ago and said that she's
been talking to her grandma and that "mormonism is not for her"....
She is supposed to be back home soon so we'll try and stop by and see if we can
visit with her. We started teaching Ignacio's fiancee, Amanda, when we go over
to visit with him. They both want to be baptized, so we put them on date for December
20. Neither of them will keep commitments so we're not sure what to do with
them now. We may have to drop them, which I don't want to do. We're still
trying to teach Veronica, but she has a really short attention span and a
spotty memory. So lessons can only last five minutes with her, and that's if we
can even get a lesson started with her. She has come to church and really liked
it so we're not giving up on her yet! Alfredo's still doing pretty well but
he's really hard to get ahold of because he doesn't have a phone or a car. He's
been helping his sister move, so he spends a lot of time with her, and not a
lot of time at home. His mom, who doesn't speak a lot of English, really loves
it when we come over and visit! She always gives us food! Mexican sweet bread,
pomegranates, fresh eggs, bananas, hot chocolate, homemade tamales... We were
over there last night, trying to meet with Alfredo, but he wasn't home, so she
fed us some tamales and they were so good!!! When I told her that they were
really good, she got SO happy!
No, Lauren didn't tell
me that she met them! That's really cool! My companion's name is Steven Taylor
and he lives in Cottonwood Heights. So it probably was him! What was the lady's
name that she met?
Have you guys watched
the "He is the Gift" video the church made? If you haven't, GO AND
WATCH IT! It's super short, super powerful, and super awesome! In the December
Ensign, there's an article that talks about the video, and about how YOU can
share it with people! There are nine pass-along cards in the Ensign that you
can hand out to someone that may need a message about Jesus Christ! I hope all
of you will start passing out those cards, and if you don't get the Ensign, talk
to people and watch the video with them! Especially with it being Christmas
time, it's really easy to start up a conversation that can lead to a discussion
about the Savior!
I love you all and
pray for you every day! I pray that you will all have missionary opportunities,
so I hope that when a moment comes when you can share the gospel, you can open
your mouth and bear your testimony!
Love you!!
Elder Warren
p.s. I definitely need a
scripture bag! could you add that to my Christmas wishlist? Gracias! I love you
all!
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