Christmas!!!

Thursday:

It's weird starting on a Thursday, but here we go. Big thing of the day... there's this candy I REALLY like called Reeses Fastbreaks. Every single time I go to a new store, I check all the candy areas for them. I have checked dozens of stores in Massachusetts and Conneticut and never found them. But we had a pre-Christmas miracle. Elder Bilar was out of shampoo, so we went across the street to the dollar tree, and as we were checking out, I saw them! I made Elder Bilar buy 4 of them and they are just as great as I remember. That night we had exchanges. I was with our district leader, Elder Parish. He's a super cool guy, and we actually met in the beginning of my mission. We didn't have a busy night, so we just talked for a couple of hours. The Christmas season is pretty weird for missionaries, so it was nice to relax a bit. 

Friday:

Christmas!!!! It was a really fun day, but here's one funny thing. Last Thursday, it snowed, and again on Sunday. About 18 inches in all. We have been trudging through snow all week. Then, we wake up and all of the snow is gone! Disappeared! Apparently, last night it got really warm and rained and melted all the snow. So every other day, except Christmas, was white- haha! Anyways, it was a great day. We woke up and got ready, then opened all of our presents, taking turns. The other elders went first, because they got 2 giant stockings from their ward plus some big FedEx boxes, haha. It was great, and I got everything I needed! We wanted to play spikeball with the other elders, but we had to go to a Christmas zoom call with our district. And when we finished 2 hours later, the other elders had theirs! So it was dark by the time we finished, haha. So we just called all of our families, and I finally got to see all my nieces and nephews. When I called Taylor, Liam was there and when he saw me he said "Jeffee! Jeffee! Jeffee's coming! Jeffee's coming!" It was so cute. It was so crazy to see how all the kids are all so big! Brooke doesn't crawl but she army crawls and is crazy fast, so it's hilarious to watch, haha. 

Saturday:

Saturday was the most productive day we have had in a while. We had more exchanges! But this time I was with Elder Moody. It was a lot of fun and we actually had 4 lessons planned. The first one was with a member in the Ward, but we also talked to Bryce and Lucca. It's so much fun talking about the Gospel with my friends. Now that I've gotten over my social fear it's really chill, and I love it. We talked about the story of Enos with Bryce. And gave the message of the restoration to Lucca. He was pretty receptive and said he would pray about it which was awesome. Our last lesson didnt go through but all in all a good day. 

Sunday:

Normally we exercise in the mornings, but not on Sunday for obvious reasons. So we have a lot of extra prep time. A guy in our ward is writing a book about his conversion story, so I spent the time reading a little bit. It's an awesome story. From there we got ready and went to church. Elder Bilar and I usually sit in the back, and he translates into a mic. I like to talk to myself and just translate as well just to practice. I was going strong when Elder Bilar needed to get his Book of Mormon, so he handed me the mic and said translate. I was pretty confident, after all I, I had been doing it the entire time. The next words out of Bishop's mouth were, "Now I'm going to let my inner English Teacher out for a moment." Then he said something along the lines of "The background of this verse helps to shed an interesting light on what his motivations may have been in this case." Then he continued to assault my head with words I didn't even know in English let alone Portuguese. Elder Bilar was back within 15 seconds, but it felt like an eternity. And I'll tell you right now that was 15 seconds of silence, because I did not say a word, haha. The English elders are moving out of our apartment so we needed to go all the way to Boston to bring them to their new car. So we spent the rest of the day on a road trip; that was a lot of fun. I had a fight with the car's bluetooth, we talked a bit with the sisters who had the car, then we headed back home. 

Monday: 

Today is our last full day with the other elders. They are really excited to leave, because they are an hour away from their area right now, but it's still sad. We decided to make our last p-day a good one by going out to a restaurant my parents recommended called The Place 2 Be. It looked really nice, so we were excited as well as nervous about the prices. We had good news and bad news when we got there. The good news is that the prices were much lower than we thought, not cheap but not too expensive. The bad news is that the food reflected that, haha. It still looked really pretty though, and it filled our stomachs. From there we went to the mall and spent a long time looking for a barber shop that wasn't there. And I bought a new sweater from banana republic. Elder Hoopes and I went to get hair cuts, and we got home and had a spikeball tourney with the boys. Finished the P-day with boneless wings and watching clips from the Chosen, a tv series about the New Testament. Not bad.  

Yet Another Week

Tuesday:

Yesterday was a busy day with the temple, so I never got the chance to clean, and this apartment needs it. I did go to the store and several precious dollars later had all the stuff that the apartment didn't already have: sponges, rags, soap, bleach etc. I got started cleaning the mold out of the showers and hair off the bathroom floor, then went to the kitchen and the floors and 4 hours later we had half our apartment livable, lol. I guess I'm the 'clean roommate' in this group. I celebrated the clean kitchen by making it dirty again with pork chops and then spent the night calling people and finding people to teach on Facebook. 

Wednesday: 

The big thing from today was ward council. The ward mission leader is married to one of my parents' missionaries, so we talked a bit about that. While my parents were here on Monday, they actually had dinner with them which was cool.

Thursday:

We left a bit early today to go to service, and it was a lot of fun. A little less intimate which is too bad. One of the guys from my old area's service sent me a $5 gift card which I thought was nice. Elder Bilar and I were bagging oranges when I said that after he finished that box we were going to race to see who could finish a box faster. Right as we were about to start, the manager walked up and said, "All right guys, we're finishing up so you can start cleaning." So much for that, haha. I decided I want to make a more concrete meal plan, so we decided to go to the store to grab one of those white boards that sticks to the fridge. We got all ready to head out, and I went to grab a snack for the road and wouldn't you know, the only thing on the fridge was a whiteboard. I don't know how we both missed that. It's a good thing we didn't leave, because the moving elders ended up coming over to drop some stuff off. We talked to them, but had to go because we had a lesson with a member named Keith. He's the coolest guy ever! He's a dean at Harvard and has a really great conversion story. We talked for about an hour so there's too much to go into, but it was great. Now some sad news, that investigator from last week who was SUPER excited cancelled on us. We asked if she wanted to reschedule, and she said no. Basically the reason she cancelled her baptism was, because she did a bunch of research on Anti-Church of Jesus Christ websites and believed them more than us. Once it got her to doubt the feelings she had received, it was over. She explained her concerns to us, and we bore our testimonies, but she wasn't listening. Why would you go to the people who hate us in order to learn what we believe in? It doesn't make sense. I think she will soften her heart again one day.

Friday:

We had a zone training which was a lot of fun. Afterwards, we all took pictures together, and it was a blast to be with everyone. We had some alerts there were 4 packages for us, so we were all excited. When we went to the mail room, all 4 were for Elder Hoopes! We went to check the mail, and I jokingly said, "Why bother? It's all gonna be for Elder Hoopes." Then when we got there, there were 2 letters and another package for him, haha. We joked about how it was like the scene from Best Two Years. After that we went upstairs to do Facebook finding. 

Saturday:

We started off with an amazing lesson with Vanessa. People often struggle to keep commitments, but she said that she's been praying every night. We extended an invitation to be baptized, and she wasn't quite ready. But we were still able to refer her to the sister missionaries for more lessons and continued on with our next lesson. That night our ward put on a Christmas-light-drive-through at a golf course. We went with our Zone leaders and had a ton of fun. Then we went to Chic-Fil-A. When the lady came to take our orders and asked our names, Elder Parish said, "Just call us Elders." Then I pointed out that we were all Elders. The lady at the dive through went by Diva, and she was a ton of fun. She put our names as Elder 1 2 3 and 4. 

Sunday: 

Church day! Always a good day! Apparently the Spanish elders complained to the sisters that they were starving and needed food. Elder Bilar and I thought that was funny because we have SOOOOOO much food, but they just survive off fast food. A sister gave us some steaks and pasta. When we got home, we showed them our fridge, so they would see how full it was. Then they sent a picture of their fridge, and it was empty! I made some sweet potato fries and steaks letting the steaks marinate in mustard, garlic and cinnamon beforehand. They were amazing if I do say so myself. After that we called a guy named Alex who used to be taught by the missionaries here. He was drunk but nice. He was telling us he reads the Book of Mormon every day! We lives in MA right now, but we are going to try and help him. He's Brazilian, but has been here so long and was so drunk that he couldn't really speak Portuguese. We set a lesson with him for the future and hope he's sober next time. After that, a self-referral named Earl called us. He's from the UK and came across the Church online; it sparked his interest. He's a good guy, and we look forward to seeing where it goes. I took a break to organize some drawers and now we can put things on the shelf! It's not that I like to clean, but sometimes the process of putting things right helps me clear my head and makes life less distracting.