It's finally getting cold!

How's everyone doing? Good. So this week was pretty good again. I'll start with yesterday at church. It was a good meeting, jsut as good as a testimony meeting can be in our ward. Bryan was there in his new suit that his mom bought for him. We sat with him through the first hour, and I think he enjoyed it. We let him go to his 2nd and 3rd hour classes and met up with him after church for his baptism. I could tell that even though he said he wasn't excited, he was. We got him changed into his white, and took a few pictures. The baptismal service was awesome. We asked one of the Young Men who was baptized last november to give a talk, and he sounded like a missionary. It was an awesome talk. Then Bryan's little brother, who was also baptized last year, gave a talk about the Holy Ghost, which was about 45 seconds long. haha. Bryan wanted Bishop to do the baptism, so that was cool. I guess the water was a little too hot, though. That is what they both said when they went in the water. haha. But, it was so cool to see him get baptized. He's so cool. The only bad thing is that only part of his family was there. His parents are inactive, so it was great that his mom was there, but his dad wasn't, and neither were his grandpa, or aunt and cousin. But, it was cool nontheless.

Mike, unfortunately, was not at church this week. He gave us a call Saturday night and told us to cancel his ride to church. He said that he has been trying to make himself believe everything, but it's just not working. I don't understand what's happening to him, cause he was doing so awesome. He had gone 23 days without a cigarette, then he had one, and then went another 4 days without one, and now he's just giving up on us. He was really upset when we told him he had to wait a week to get baptized after he had smoked again, and I don't think he understood why that needed to happen. He kept saying that it didn't make sense to him cause in the Bible, John the Baptist baptized everybody that lived, and they didn't have to repent before they were baptized, so he didn't see why he had to. I have a feeling that he is just upset about waiting, and that he will calm down and change his mind in a few weeks, but that might be worse, cause we'll make him wait even longer so he can prepare better. We are meeting with him tomorrow, so we'll see what's up with him.

We are also meeting with Nick and Midge tomorrow night, with our Mission President so we can discuss options for her situation and how we can get her baptized. I'm pretty excited for that so we can get something figured out with them, and so we can see President in action. haha. It's going to be pretty awesome. If you forgot who they are, she is a quadreplegic, and he is her best friend. We are almost done teaching them, so we just wanted to invite our President so we can figure something out with her.

So another pretty awesome thing that we did this week was Zone Conference. The conference itself was awesome. All of the Zone Leaders gave trainings on different topics, and they were all so good. I learned so much about each topic, I feel like I have a lot more I could be doing to be a better missionary. It was such a good day. Cool story - at lunch during the conference, we were going down the tables getting our food (which was like thanksgiving dinner - so good!) and I guess it was some of the local Relief Society members that provided the meal for us, but one of them asked me if I had a brother in the California Roseville Mission. I was pretty surprised and said yes. She said that her name was Sis. Dowling, and that her son was my brother's companion. What?! That was a mind-blower. Definitely wasn't expecting that. Pretty cool though, eh? She told me that she had heard that I had played a mean joke on my family....haha. I guess I'm getting pretty famous for that, huh? That's pretty funny. But yeah, Zone Conference was the best one yet. We got some good insights and had lots of goals that we set from that.

I heard that Utah got spanked pretty hard last week. HAHA. that's good news for sure. I also heard that BYU had a pretty good game too. Also good news. Has college basketball started yet? Just wondering.

Well, I think it's finally starting to change to fall/winter. It's been pretty cold since last week when it was in the 70's. Now we're lucky if we get above 50. But, I'm enjoying it. The only bad thing is with Daylight Savings ending yesterday, it now gets dark about 4:00. That's pretty tough to work in. We just have to make all of our appointments for when it's dark that way we can still do some finding when there's light out. It hasn't snowed yet, but I think we'll see some of that pretty soon. It's been raining for about 2 days, so I wouldn't be surprised if we get some this week. That'll be cool.

Cool, well I think that's it for this week. Mom, yes I actually need my Garnett shoes. The tennis shoes I took with me are getting pretty thrashed, and now I don't have any shoes to play basketball or other sports in on pdays. I would appreciate those greatly. I haven't received your letter from last week either. We haven't been home today, so I don't know if it came today or not. But, it'll come somtime hopefully. I was also wondering if you could send me a tub of Stephen's Citrus Wassail. I've looked in lots of stores out here, and can't seem to find any of that stuff. The closest thing I've found is apple cider, but that just isn't the same.

Alrighty then, I'd best be going now. I didn't get any mail last week, which was super lame, so I really hope I get some this week... Well, we'll hear from you soon. Hope you all have a great week. Love you all!!!

Love,

Elder Hammer