6 More Weeks

Well, I made it through another transfer and both Elder Garner and I will be staying in the Penn Valley Ward. There have been a few changes in the zone, but nothing that really affests us. Apparently there were three Elders from the MTC who ended up going home before getting out here, so they had to combine two of the wards in my zone and now only one set of missionaries are covering them both. That's too bad. It really makes things a lot easier when every ward has its own set of missionaries.

Other than transfers, not much is happening. We have started teaching a less active member, Allison Young, and her non-member husband sits in on the lessons although he plays Tiger Woods '10 on the PS3 the whole time. The first time we met with them a week or so ago the husband, Tracy, listened to us but didn't do much more than that. He did tell us that he's really open minded about everything and that he is totally supportive of his wife coming back to church though. He also said that his family is the most important part of his life. Hearing that as a missionary is like seeing flashing lights and hearing sirens and it's like the Spirit is yelling, "Go! Go! Go!" in your ears (figuratively speaking of course : ) So, in our most recent visit Elder Garner and I prepared a lesson all about families and how we can be together forever. We even reviewed the Proclamation to the World with Allison. Tracy listened the whole time. He still didn't participate, but his game was paused for almost the entire time we were there. We committed them to have family prayer and did it with them that night. It was great. Their youngest son even had the giggles a little bit during the prayer. Family prayer is the same no matter where you go. Awesome! Hopefully we gave Tracy something to think about and hopefully Allison's example will help him out.

It was a little nuts Sunday night when we went to visit our neighbor, Bob, and he had the closing ceremonies of the Olympics on TV. Bob isn't a member, nor does he want to be, but he does like us to stop by for a visit now and again. He's a pretty old guy and he likes missionaries, but every time we bring up a Gospel topic he dodges it somehow and tells us he's happy how he is. Anyways, we saw just a bit of what they were showing on the TV and it happened to be about Shaun White and how crazy he did. They showed all three of the runs he had on the Superpipe including his victory run where he nailed his new trick at the bottom of the pipe. That was crazy!! I was happy to see he got gold. I was also bummed to see the US lost to Canada in the Men's Hockey finals. I bet that was a heartbreaker. Too bad. Oh well, March Madness is just around the corner (the second best time of the year behind rivalry week in college football (of course that is only applicable to non-missionaries as well ; ) )) Go Cougars! Even out here I have to put up with crap about BYU from members and other missionaries. There is this one missionary in our zone who always seems to be in a bad mood. Then one day, he wore a shirt with the name of a certain team that will not be named in this email to our P-day activity and it just made sense. Of course he is unhappy! His favorite color is red!

Alright, I'm loving life right now. Of course things would be even better if we could get more investigators, but that's ok. We do have some leads that we are going to try this week including a lady we heard about today, actually, who is really interested in the church and even possibly wants to be baptized. She may not be in our ward boundaries, so we're going to check it out here in a few minutes. I'll let you know how it goes.

I hope everyone has a good week. Let me know how Devin is doing (still no emails...). I love you all!!

Elder J. Hammer