Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! (Week 64 In The Field)

Wow, I cannot explain to you how awesome this past week has been. I don't even know where to begin. I guess I can begin with last Tuesday. That day we had our Christmas conference most of the day from 9AM to 4PM. It's basically just a zone conference with a Christmas theme to it. 2 zones were a part of it, and it was awesome because I got to see my pops! (My trainer) I also got to see my MTC companion and a lot of other good friends I have made while being out on my mission.

At zone conference they talked a lot about how we need to be more bold in inviting people to make commitments and how we need to begin with the end in mind. Basically how when we start teaching people we need to picture them going to the temple some day and getting sealed. Which is an interesting way to look at it, so now I need to take that into account when we first start teaching people. The best part about Christmas conference was when Santa made a surprise visit during lunch time. So obviously I had to take a selfie with him, it's not every day you get to see Santa and talk with him face to face haha.

So after the conference one of the sister's car wouldn't start so since nobody had jumper cables we had to call one of our members that lived close by to come jump start their car. It took like 30 minutes for us to find someone. We called our investigator and his daughter answered the phone and said she would be glad to help but her Dad wasn't home. We were hoping it would be our investigator that came to help so we could set an appointment with him but nonetheless, we were very thankful for the help in which we were able to have. We were able to jump start the sister's car and they were on their way.

Christmas Eve was awesome as well! :) A bunch of musically talented Elders and Sisters from our zone got together and went to the mall to Carroll. That turned out to be a great finding tool! We passed out so many He Is The Gift cards and people loved us! One Elder played the guitar, while another Elder went into one of the stores, asked for an empty box and used that as if he were playing the bongos. Let me tell you, the box was the best part! People loved it and started video'ing him doing box solos in between the verses of Joy To The World. So while those two were playing instruments, the rest of us sang, while another Elder and a Sister were passing out cards for whoever walked by. It was a ton of fun. As we were leaving, a member saw us and gave us 40 bucks to get ourselves some ice cream. We were all very thankful and decided to go to baskin robins. Must have been inspired, because there my companion met a guy named Shawn, who was interested and he invited us to come over to his house and teach him more about what we believe. It was funny because he just so happened to live in our ward boundaries too. So we set an appointment to go over there on Saturday at 5.

Now I'll come to that part when I get to what happened on Saturday so I'll hold off on that story until when I get there.

On Christmas I got to skype my family, which was the best part of the week! :) I love them so much and cannot wait to see them again! It was so nice to talk with them, I'm so glad we get to skype twice a year. Anyways, that was the highlight for sure.

After we went and visited a part member family and shared a quick Christmas themed lesson. The 15 year old daughter just got baptized last year. Her Dad is less active, and her Mom is not a member so it was a very good teaching opportunity, and we had dinner with them the next day! The lesson went well, got to know the family for the first time, super nice family. After that, we went to a members house and watched The Lego Movie with them, which was an awesome movie. I loved it, perfect allegory to the plan of salvation.  We also played games and ate late lunch with them. All in all it was a fun day.

Friday we moved out actually. We moved into apartments way out of our area. It is now a 20 minute walk just to get to our area. But anyways it took up our whole day moving into that. Our Bishop is still continuing to look for someone to house us within the ward boundaries. Unfortunately, I have no idea what my mailing address is yet, so I'm going to have to find that out soon and let you know.

That night we had dinner with that part member family, which I told you about earlier, and her Mom said she was interested in taking lessons some time in the future, so that was super exciting to hear.

On Saturday we had that lesson with Shawn we talked to in Baskin Robins. So we get into his home and he's super friendly with us. And we go in prepared to teach the restoration but instead he just argued with us. We kept telling him we weren't here to argue and asked if he was truly interested in what we believed and he said yes. However every point we kept bringing up he just wanted to argue with us on it. So we were in there for a good hour and a half and we didn't want to keep wasting our time if he was just gonna argue with us. We tried so hard to get out of there as soon as possible but he just kept on talking forever haha. Needless to say, he was not prepared. After the lesson, a member took us to get Panda, so that was some nice comfort food after that horrible lesson.

Sunday, not much happened. But before emails this morning we went shopping at Walmart and a guy walks up to us, non member, and he says his name is Joseph Smith. And it actually was! He grew up in Utah and worked for the Church, however we thought it was interesting that he was not a member. He was a super nice guy though. We invited him to take the lessons and be baptized, however he's moving to New York in a couple days, but who knows maybe he will join the Church some day. Now I can say we invited Joseph Smith to be baptized haha!

Anyways, that was my week! :) I hope you all had a great Christmas. I love and miss you all so much, have a great week and a happy new year! 2015 BABY! :D

Elder Greer

Santa at zone conference!

Selfie with Santa!

 New tie "rack" for Christmas!

Sick Week (Literally) - (Week 63 In The Field)

So unfortunately I came down with a pretty bad cold this past week, so I had to take it slow a couple of days. But, on the bright side I feel a lot better now! :) So that's good because Christmas is coming up and nobody wants to be sick on Christmas.

However, for the days that we did go out and work, we worked our tails off trying to pass out as many He Is The Gift pass along cards as possible. You would think people would be more willing to accept a pass along card than anything else. We have to pass out 10 a day, and it is hard! We will go out knocking doors and people will refuse to even accept a harmless card that has a harmless link to a video on it. Haha it is what it is. As long as we do our best to try to share this great message we have to others.

My companion and I yesterday said to each other, "Alright, today we WILL pass out 10 cards." So we knocked doors and ITL'ed right after church until it got dark. And we actually managed to do it! We passed out 10! :D We figured we should try our best to do that because Christmas is right around the corner and we won't really have much more time to pass them out anymore. This week is gonna be booked. Well, at least till after Christmas. Oh by the way, for those that don't know, ITL stands for Invite To Learn. So when you ITL someone, basically it's just street contacting. Talking to someone cleaning up the yard, washing the car, putting up Christmas lights, whatever they may be doing outside of their home. It's my favorite form of finding because you could just walk up and ask if they need any help. Usually they say no, but they are pretty surprised when you offer help and then they become more friendly to talk to haha.

Oh, our appointment with our investigator fell through this week, not surprised, but hopefully we can set one up again. We may have a new investigator coming up shortly though!  This couple investigated the church a while back but stopped because their son disowned them. However it's looking like they wanna meet with us again so we are super excited! :) I'll keep you updated on that.

Sorry this letter is going to be shorter than normal. Because of my sickness, we weren't able to do much. Oh and I forgot, Christmas day is my 15 month mark! I hope you all have a very merry Christmas! Don't forget why we really celebrate Christmas. Always remember him this special day and throughout the year. He is the greatest gift that was ever given to us, and I am so thankful for him and all he has done for us. I am so thankful to be his servant at this time to help his children come to the knowledge of the fullness of the gospel. I know He lives and loves every single one of us. :) Don't forget him on this special day. Remember him in every thought.

Love,

Elder Greer

#ShareTheGift

Exchanges and Other Craziness (Week 62 In The Field)

This week, and last week as well, have been really awesome weeks! Probably because during this time of year there are a bunch of activities that the church puts on. We have literally had some type of activity every week so far.

A couple weeks ago we had something called a Christmas Creche. It lasted from Friday 5 to 9 and Saturday from 2 to 9. Basically what it is, is thousands of different nativity scenes from different countries, depicted in different ways. All the nativity scenes were set up in the gym and there were signs hanging, categorizing where the different nativity scenes came from. Like some were from Africa, South America, Pacific Islands, Asia, etc. They also had musical performances in the chapel during the evening times, and a live nativity outside in the back of the church. It was very well done and there were more non-members than members that attended! It was a great missionary tool. They actually had all the missionaries in the zone help work the creche. I mainly helped pouring and passing out hot chocolate, and greeted people at the entrance. It was so much fun, I didnt want it to end haha. I thought it was such a great idea, I wanted to recommend to my home stake to do it when I get home, but it turns out they just started doing it haha. Well, for next year's Ill have a few suggestions to help make it better. :)

Anyways, this past week was kept pretty interesting. We started out the week with going on exchanges with our zone leaders who have become pretty much our best friends, we hangout every p-day and do service together during the week. The exchanges went great! I stayed here in my area and was with Elder Conrad, who actually served here 2 months ago haha, He enjoyed seeing some of the members again. We worked really hard. We talked to everyone that was outside and managed to pass out 10 He Is The Gift pass-along cards to people. I dont know what it is, you always manage to have really good things happen when you go on exchanges. We may not have found any investigators but by the end of the day we both felt that we did really good that night.

Later that week we had the ward Christmas party, which was awesome. Apparently our ward has a jazz band, and they did such a good job!

And on Sunday, this is where things got interesting. We attended our regular church meetings, and after we had our missionary coordination meeting. During that meeting one of the ward missionaries told us that he has a friend that agreed to take the missionary discussions. I got super excited when I heard this, because that's the first time a member got us an investigator. We should be setting up a time to teach him this week. We are super excited! Please pray that all goes well with that.

Anyways after we went to our dinner, here is the crazy part, we had just a normal nice dinner. then she brings out the dessert, which is just some cookies. Anyways, I take a couple bites of the cookie and I start feeling a tingling on my tongue and the roof of my mouth, so I decided to stop eating the cookie at that point. Then I could start feeling my tongue and throat swell a little bit. At this point I'm freaked out, because I've never had an allergic reaction before. I asked her what was in the cookies, and apparently it was like a raspberry filling cookie. I already knew I was mildly allergic to some fruits, usually it just makes my ears itch, but this reaction was worse, still not too bad though because I could still breath. So I took some medicine and asked for a blessing. By the end of the night the swelling went down. Had to end up cancelling one of our appointments because I just wasn't up for teaching that night after that.

So instead, we went to our stake Christmas devotional which was very nice and relaxing. The music was beautiful, and I also got to see a few members from my last ward which was nice. Anyways, I feel perfectly back to normal today and ready to go have some fun. I'll keep you posted about our new investigator, his name is Peter by the way.

I hope you all have a great week! I love and miss you all!

Elder Greer

**Darren: You'll recall Andrew told us he was asked to sing a solo several weeks ago.  We were finally able to get a copy of it, and you can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVe6A43Ev60&feature=youtu.be

Andrew's Early Christmas Present From Us :)

Andrew's companions grandma sent him a mini tree 

Andrew and his companion with Santa :)

Happy Thanksgiving and 14 Months! (Week 60 In The Field)

Well I'm going to start this letter off by letting everyone know I have now officially been out 14 months here in the mission field. I wish there was a way I could just slow down the time, it goes by way too fast haha.

Anyways, I wanna wish everyone a happy thanksgiving, I hope y'all's thanksgiving was just as amazing as mine! :) So for thanksgiving at 8 in the morning our ward had a turkey bowl combined with another ward. That was a lot of fun, I dressed though, as if it were going to be 40 degrees outside, and oh man to my surprise it was not. It was in the 60s and when we started playing, I got so hot, so I took off my sweater but I was still wearing jeans, so that didnt help very much haha. Out of all the guys that showed up, I was the only one in jeans, so the guys joked around about that a few times, but then I started doing really good and they were all like oh man, the jeans must be helping and making him better! Haha, it was a lot of fun, first time I've played football in a few months, and I was doing pretty good.

After, we had thanksgiving lunch with one of the members in our ward, which was awesome!! I ate way too much food haha. After the dinner, we shared a thought on the atonement of Christ and both shared our testimony and how thankful we were for Christ's sacrifice and what it's meant for us in our lives.

After that, we went to our bishops house and watched Elf because we are allowed to watch one movie for thanksgiving and Christmas that is G or PG. Oh man I forgot how funny that movie was, I was laughing like the whole time, it was kind of embarrassing because bishop had his whole family there and I was like the only one laughing that much. But anyways, that was fun, then after we played settlers of catan with his family and we played with an expansion pack, which made the game a whole lot more interesting. And that was the end of our thanksgiving, hope you all had a good thanksgiving too. :)

As far as teaching went this past week, most of our appointments fell through probably because of the holidays. But this next week should be really good because the brethren started this new initiative called the "He is the Gift" initiative. They have given us a bunch of pass along cards they want us to hand out before Christmas, and we are actually going to have a new statistic we have to report on the number of investigators we find through this initiative. Its a big deal.You can watch the video on the website http://christmas.mormon.org so check that out whenever you all get the chance, it is an amazing video that just reminds us of the true meaning of Christmas.

On December 7th the church will take over YouTube's home page to advertise this video and they will be the only advertisers on the front page of YouTube until after Christmas. They are expecting big things to come from this so I am excited! Please Share this video with all your friends. I can't wait to see all the good that comes out of this. :)

Oh I forgot to tell you, it's the beginning of a new transfer and we received news this past Saturday that both us will be staying. I am excited to see what good thing are going to come out of this next transfer! :) Anyways, sorry this is so short but I just want to end by saying how thankful I am to be a missionary and to help in this great work. I am thankful for my family and the wonderful example they are to me, I love them so much and cant wait to be reunited with them again soon.

Oh shout out to my brother Tyler, its his birthday this week, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TYLER!!! Hope its a good one. :) 

Love you! I'll send you something this week! I guess I will end by saying how thankful I am for the Savior and His atonement. I have gained a deeper understanding of it and know that it is the most important gift that we have been given. I have a testimony of its infinite power and I know that when we actually apply it in our lives we will be much happier.

I love and miss you all so much and hope you all have an amazing week this coming week!

Elder Greer

Paper Nativity Set that we sent him!