Exchanges, Snow, Turkey, Life

What a week!  This week has been probably one of the strangest weeks that I've experienced while being out here in Wisconsin...  But hey, that doesn't mean that it wasn't great!  :D

I'll just go through it day by day though...  :)  You will be happy to know that on Monday, last P-day, I was able to go to Burlington Coat Factory and get a whole bunch of Winter Gear!  I got 2 scarves, 2 pairs of gloves, some wool socks, and a hat!  So don't worry, I've been pretty warm while I've been out here.  It has been getting pretty cold every day, and colder as the days go on, but I've been able to stay warm.  :)  I'll have to send a photo sometime - I look semi-like an eskimo..  :P

On Tuesday we had district meeting!  That went pretty well.  We were able to role-play and do a whole bunch of training things like that, which was actually really helpful.  But, after District Meeting was over, Elder Shipp and I separated on Exchanges with the District Leader.  I stayed with Elder Anderson on the University of Wisconsin campus for the rest of Tuesday and all of Wednesday, and Elder Broderick went to our place with Elder Shipp.  I really loved exchanges as usual though.  All we did on Tuesday was contact a few referrals, who weren't interested.  We then went to dinner with the other Campus elders at a member's house, which was pretty fun, and then we made our way back to the apartment for the night.

Elder Anderson

The next day was very adventurous!  We did our studies and everything in the morning, but that had to be cut short to catch a bus to campus.  That is one thing that has been kind of hard for me.  I want to get the little time I have to study in and be able to learn a lot, but when our mode of transportation is only buses, which can tend to be a bit unreliable, so we have to do our best to go by their schedule.  But, when we got to campus, we went straight to the Institute building to wait for a lesson, so I was able to finish my studies there.  :)  Our lesson was with a student named Alec, who seems like he is really searching for the truth.  He is reading the Book of Mormon and has a baptism date, he just hasn't made it to church yet, which is something that is super important!  :D  But we had a member come to our lesson, which was my first member-present of my entire mission!  Usually when we get a member to come, the person is never there, but this time they both came!  :D  So we taught Alec and committed him to come to church, but I'm not sure if that worked out this last week or not.  After our lesson though, we wandered around campus for the rest of the day, stopping people and talking to them about the gospel, sharing short 1-minute lessons about our beliefs, getting rejected a ton, but having lots of success as well!  One young man was from Korea, but knew about the church because he went to BYU and volunteered to teach Korean at the MTC, but he still wasn't a member.  Another guy was from Wyoming and knew of the history of the church, but none of the doctrine, so we gave him a Book of Mormon and explained what it had in it.  Another guy said he wasn't religious, but accepted our message, pamphlet, and a prayer before we left.  And then another lady had been here for 2 weeks from China, didn't speak English very well, but still talked to us and got our number and the address of the church.  I don't know if anything will come of it but hey, we did our part!  :)  But that was our day, and then in the evening we met back up with our companions and exchanged back.

Thursday was THANKSGIVING!  And if any of you have questions about what we did on Thanksgiving, it did not involve teaching...  We tried to set up lessons for that day, but none of them worked out.  So all we did was our studies until about 1:30, and then we got picked up by our bishop at 2 to go to his house for thanksgiving.  It was a typical thanksgiving meal, and it was super good!  :D  We also played games with their grandkids and with the family, and I won the air-hockey tournament!  :D  But it was a typical Thanksgiving, nothing super special other than the fact that I was out here on a mission and not at home hanging out with you guys!  :) 

On Friday, we did our Weekly planning because we were super busy yesterday.  During that, we called Ezekiel, our Investigator who lives super far away, and asked him when we could come visit him...  We ended up dropping him though, because he was like "Don't worry about me you guys.  I'm good, you're good, so don't worry."  So I guess you could say that he dropped us, but unfortunately it was a mutual decision.

Then, we called Oscar, who committed to coming to church over the phone!  Talk about cool! 

Then we had a great dinner appointment with some of the greatest Pizza I've ever had, but that was the end of our day. 

Saturday started with Correlation, but then we got a ride down to Caceldo's house from Bro. Smith, in a really sketchy part of the neighborhood called the Allied Territory.  We got to Caceldo's house, and when he came to the door, he told us that he had just woken up and was about to head out for the day - so he had forgotten about our lesson...  So, briefly, I asked him if he would come to church, and he said YES!  So, from that point, we were expecting 2 people at church tomorrow!  Later though, we had a member-present lesson planned, but our investigator was not home once again!  Talk about frustrating...  Oh well... 

Sunday rolled around though, and neither of the guys were at church.  After talking to Elder Shipp about it, it is apparently pretty typical for the Hispanics to not follow through with their commitments, but I was still pretty put out about it..  I was so excited that we might actually have some people come to church!  But I guess not - that was not that day...  And then after a long day of contacting with no success on Sunday, we shared dinner with the English elders that live close to us, and then we had an epic card-throwing duel with them using our pass-along cards...  Pretty fun.  Missionaries do crazy things sometimes..  

 

But life really is great!  I am getting used to the fact that we don't have a lot of follow-through lessons and things like that, but my attitude is staying up!  :D  I love you all!

Amazing Sunset

-- 

Elder Nathan Hubert