January 8, 2014

 

January 8, 2014

 

Well, it's been another week. And another year. Our New Years Eve was pretty quiet. In fact it was pretty much like any other day here. We debated waking up for about ten minutes around midnight to bring in the new year, but didn't end up doing it. We were too tired. The first day of the year was a good one. We had our interviews with President and Sister Nilsen. It was good to get a chance to talk to them. We also got to have several hours of fun and productive training workshops after. Following the training, we went out and got to work and found a couple of good new investigators that we set up return appointments with. One of them called later and cancelled his, but that's actually a good sign because it means he actually remembered when it was and was conscientious enough to call us about it. Hopefully we can reschedule with him. We have had some good "practice lessons" with members lately, where we all try to pretend that they are investigators. It's a little weird at first and they have to say things like "Uh, we're... Catholic... yeah... so we believe in that. (Is it okay for us to say that?)" but, it gets them thinking about missionary work and actually does give us a chance to practice our teaching skills. We got a media referral from church headquarters this week that led us to a lady named B. who was working with missionaries in Indianapolis and wants to be baptized. She is really sincere and her two sons and mother in law are interested too. If all goes well, we will have several baptisms in the next little while. Things are going well with J., too. He and his wife are interested in getting into the church, which for him means baptism. We have had a super cold couple of days here, so we've mostly been inside, but we hear the weather should be warming up soon so we can go back to work. We always live in hope that we will eventually have a car. Elder Cole and I are both staying in Marble Cliff 1 for this transfer, and most of the other people in our zone are staying as well, including the other four missionaries in our ward. We had a "fun day" with our zone at the OSU institute this morning. We spray painted t-shirts, had a white elephant gift exchange ( I ended up with a copy of Mormon Doctrine.) , and had a marshmallow gun/dodge ball war. It was pretty fun. It is always good to be around other missionaries. I hope all is going well back home. It is always good to hear from you guys.

Have a blessed week!

Love,

Elder Ethan Schow