I hope that y'all had a great Christmas! I know I did. It was so nice to talk to you guys for a little while on Skype! It felt like I had just talked to you yesterday! Time flies. I remember when I first got to Skype and when the call was over I thought "man I won't skype them again until Christmas, that's so far away" And now it's already come and passed! Crazy. Mom looks younger every time I see her!! :) Dad has looked the same since I was 5.... Troy had a thick neck haha
I had a tremendous week this week. Christmas was a ton of fun and it helped me become more motivated for some reason. I feel really refreshed and ready to go now haha. After I skyped Elder Bassett and I went to the Stacey's and hung out with them for a little while. Then we had an early dinner at the Verburg's with the Sisters and that was pretty fun. Sister Verburg got us all cookie butter because we had talked about it the week before haha. After the Verburg's we were able to have dinner with Cynthia. She was excited to feed us on Christmas and I'm glad we could have helped her have a better Christmas. Then after that we stopped by Troy's house to see him and wish him a Merry Christmas. I got him a tie as a gift. He was pretty excited about that. I had a great time with all of the members and I think we were able to develop better relationships with all of them which was nice.
We had a lot of lessons that I didn't expect to have. We are making a ton of progress with the Shavers. Stephanie and Shirley are both really wanting to change and have gained the desire to study the scriptures and come back to church. They want Stephanie's son, Rashawn to get baptized and he is a little skeptical because he was already baptized at a Seacoast church, and so he has a lot of questions for someone who is 11. He's a great kid though. We had 2 lessons with them this week and on the second one we just kind of hung out with them and Sister Da Rosa because they were all having a really terrible day. We thought that just being there for them would be the most effective thing we could do. We committed them to reading and coming to church, and I even got to play a game with Rashawn. We played baseball and when you hit the mini basketball he had you would have to run to a pole and back before getting pegged. I missed him the first throw while he was running but then I picked up the ball and pegged him right in the booty hahahahahaha. It was really funny and we all ha d a good laugh at that. We developed a better relationship with them and it was definitely important that we did that. I'm glad we did.
Miriam came to Book of Mormon class too! She enjoyed it and she had some good questions. She wasn't able to come to church again because a friend of hers went to the hospital :(. She's doing alright though. We will continue to teach her.
We've had a lot of progress with Less Actives and with our investigators and it's been great. I didn't expect this week to be very eventful with the holidays, but it turned out to be very busy.
Will you send me some easy and healthy recipes that I can make out here? I need them, I'm tired of a lot of stuff. Today I made Venison Stroganoff it was so good. A member gave us a bunch of venison so I got a recipe and made it today.
Kent asked Sean if there was anything he would like us to specifically pray for this coming week or fast for on Fast Sunday.
Pray that everything that God intends to happen with them will happen for me? Also pray for the Viehwigs. They're a family in our ward that are coming back to church. Brother Viehwig is a cop and they have a little girl named Piper. They're the best. They had us and Elder Root and his companion over for Christmas eve and we had a ton of fun with them. They're trying really hard.
I think me personally, I will be fasting that I will be able to jump to a new level of commitment and desire to work hard and become better on my mission with the new year coming up. If you would fast for me for that I would love that. Fast for Elder Bassett as well. He's a great companion and I would always want him to have all the help he can get.
Christmas was great and I had a great week. I hope everyone had a great Christmas. It's a great day to remember our Savior and what he's done for us. If it wasn't for him we wouldn't have this great holiday and the ability to enjoy our lives the way we do.
Hope everyone has a good week this week!
Love,
Elder Sean Bills
"Bourn 2 Rhyde" - Isaiah 58:14 says, "Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."
"Sow Ryechus" - 2 Nephi 9:49 says, "Behold, my soul abhorreth sin, and my heart delighteth in righteousness; and I will praise the holy name of my God."
"YOLO This is a probationary STATE" - Alma 12:24 says, "And we see that death comes upon mankind, yea, the death which has been spoken of by Amulek, which is the temporal death; nevertheless there was a space granted unto man in which he might repent; therefore this life became a probationary state; a time to prepare to meet God; a time to prepare for that endless state which has been spoken of by us, which is after the resurrection of the dead."
"Maw-Maw's BOI" - Alma 56:48 says, "And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it."