Jimmermania!

Well hello again. It's been awhile. This week has been quite the awesome one. Lots of stuff happened, and for the most part, it was really good stuff. Our investigator pool has potential to blast off this upcoming week, due to the finding we did this week. We have 2 potential families of 6 and 8 people, plus a group of 4 guys we met who are with each other all the time, and the usual single person here and there. Needless to say, this week was great, and next week shouldn't be too bad either. The first family is from Nigeria, and came as a referral from the Zone Leaders we live with. We went by with one of our members who we've been taking out a ton lately, cause he's old, unemployed, does nothing else all day, and likes to come out with us. He was with us 6 of 7 days last week. haha. But, it was our first visit, and they let us in, which is always a good sign. Like I said, they are from Nigeria, and apparently are interested in the Church. They accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon, and we taught them about half of the 1st lesson. We were running out of time before our next appointment, so we ended the lesson by extending a baptismal date. Unfortunately, the phone rang 2 times while we were extending it so they weren't as focused as we would have liked, and they ended up not accepting it right away. We tried to set up a return appointment, but they are going out of town all this week so we have to call them later. But, they were all super nice, and seemed very interested, so I'm excited.

The next family came from good old tracting. We first knocked on their door, and the father said to come back on a different day. Well, we went back on the day that he said, and he let us in. He didn't know we wanted to teach his whole family, so we only taught him, but he said that next time we go over, he'll have the whole family there, which is awesome! We ended up teaching him all of lesson 1 and extended a date to him as well, but he said he had to talk to his wife and let us know from there. We didn't set a return appointment with him either, cause his wife is going out of town, so he didn't know when the whole family would be available. His family is from Libera (?) in Africa, and they are super nice too. One thing I've learned on my mission is that it seems that everyone is really nice to us, except Americans. haha. Just a random thought I had.

The group of 4 guys came as a referral on our phone requesting a Bible. We went over to the address, and they let us in too! It was a week of us getting in houses, that's for sure. But we got talking to these guys (they are all 17 years old, and are in high school, but are really good friends, so they are with each other a lot.) they are seventh day adventists, which is usually a big road block for us, but they were way friendly and open to hear our message. We had that same member with us who I talked about earlier so that was good. We started teaching the first lesson, and their uncle (2 of the boys are brothers, and it was their uncle) came and joined us as well, which we thought would be a good thing. We got to the part where we talk about prophets, and the uncle asked us a question. He said "how can you know if there is a true prophet today?" Under normal circumstances, that would be a very good question. However, we have some suspicions that this uncle might be a preacher, mostly because he went off on us about how the prophet has to follow the will of God (which we agreed upon) but somehow he shifted from that to why the Sabbath Day is Saturday. At this point, I tuned him out, and our member proceded to Bible Bash with him. It was getting pretty intense - the uncle was literally yelling at us, when our member stood up, put on his jacket, closed his Bible, and said "Good luck in the Last Days". hahaha. It was pretty funny. He stopped yelling at us and went back to his room, so we spoke briefly about the Book of Mormon to the boys, and left. That was quite the experience. But, we have a return appointment with the boys tomorrow and I think that they are ready to hear the gospel. I'm excited for them.

In addition to all those exciting events, there were more, but that's all I'll tell for this week. Remember a couple weeks ago when I said that it was the best week numbers wise that I'd had so far on my mission? Well, this week beat that. We taught a total of 23 lessons, which is pretty cool. I have never taught that many before, but I hope to continue to improve that number and improve all other areas of work too.

One of the other cool things we did this week was candlepin bowling. We went with our Elder's Quorum. It's pretty awesome, if I say so myself. It's much different than normal bowling. The balls are about the size of a grapefruit, and don't weigh anywhere near a normal bowling ball. The lanes are the same size, but the pins are more like rods - they are just cylinders, there is no bottle shape, and they stay on the lane instead of getting cleared off after each throw. You get 3 balls per frame, and the scoring is the same as normal bowling. If you didn't understand all of that, too bad. But it's way fun. It's only here in Boston, apparently, but I think it would be a huge hit if someone opened an alley in Utah. Maybe I'll look into that after my mission... haha. It is really fun though.

Well, as my subject line suggests, yes, I have heard of Jimmermania. Mostly because half the ward is from Utah, but whatever. I haven't heard a lot, just that he's the nations leading scorer and that he's dropped 40 points 3 times this year. Sounds exciting. Can't wait to hear that they win the tournament this year :) We were also doing a little shopping today, and I heard that Deron Williams got traded!? What's up with that?

Ok, there's my worldly blurb of the week. Oh yeah, I guess this week is transfers so I should tell you about that. haha. E. Winslow is getting transferred...home. Weird. He's been packing today, so that's why the email's a bit late. I'm not getting transferred, which means it's on to transfer #8 in Lynn. Bring it on! I hope I never leave here. I love it! haha. I'll find out who my comp is tomorrow. I know it's not a Cambodian speaker, cause 2 of them are leaving, 1 is a ZL, and the other 2 didn't get transferred either, so I'll probably be with an English Elder until the new Elder gets here this transfer (and my sources say that he is coming this transfer) so that'll be cool.

One last thing...Elder Cristofferson is coming to speak to us this Saturday! I'm way excited for that! I'll let you know how it goes next week. Well, I think that's enough for this week. Pretty long email, eh? Ok, well have a great week! Love you all. Hope to hear from you next Pday, seeing as how I only got emails from Mom and Dad this week. Ok bye!