December 22, 2009

Hey family!
Congrats on your graduation Kassie, happy birthday Kaydee, and merry Christmas family!
How's everyone doing this week? Everyone ready for Christmas? I can't believe that it's Christmas! Time goes by super fast. Tomorrows going to be Easter! Anyway . . . . Things are going pretty good here. We're still having trouble pinning people down, but things are still working out. We had a baptism scheduled for this Saturday, but it looks like it might not work out again. . . . Samantha got sick the day that she was suppose to have her baptismal interview. . . . So, now we have to see what's going to happen. If we get a hold of her soon, and she gets feeling better, she might still be able to get baptized. But if not, then it probably won't be for another three weeks because of the way the stake does baptisms here. . . . *sigh* Anyway, we're hanging on to hope! There is still a chance as long as we get the interview done in the next couple of days.
We went on exchanges with the Assistants this week. Elder Coffman came out with us. Well, not really. Elder Seaborn went with some other missionaries. A missionary in our zone broke his finger playing football thanksgiving day, and so Elder Seaborn went with him and his companion to have surgery done on it. Meanwhile, Elder Coffman came with me. We had a great day. There is a set of sisters in our zone that got came into a new area together and don't have much work. So we went tracting in their area to help them. It was us, the sisters (Sister Foster and Sister Bird) and the district leader and his companion (Elder Davenport and Elder Morgan). We didn't find the sisters a whole lot of new potentials, but the ones we did find were really good. Hopefully that will help out the work a bit.
Elder Coffman actually served in this area before I did-- I replaced him-- so he knows the people here. Some of the people he taught we are still teaching. One of them, Donaldo, he was really excited to teach. If you remember WAAAYYYY back when I first got here, Roxanne, his step-daughter got baptized, but he decided he didn't want to then. We've been working with him ever since. We've tried and tried to get him to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. He would read it, but wouldn't pray to know if it was true. We were having a really hard time. A few weeks ago we met with him and told him (for the 100th time) that he really needed to pray, and we really wanted him to follow the example of Christ and be baptized. He said he knew and he would make his decision. When Elder Coffman came, we had an interview for a baptism at the same time as our appointment. So Elder Seaborn (back from the hospital) and I went to the interview and Elder Coffman went with a member to the lesson. Donaldo told Elder Coffman that he wanted to be baptized January 9th. Wow! The entire ward is super excited about it. Our ward mission leader has always said Donaldo will be the next High Priest Group leader. :-) He'll have his interview Christmas Eve, then he leaves on a trip with his wife, then when he gets back he'll be baptized.
We took and investigater to the Christmas lights last night. Bad idea! It was Monday night (Family Home Evening) and school is out. I've never seen such a big crowd! You could hardly move! And I don't think our investigater likes large groups of people-- he looked a little nervous all night. But it was still a good experience and I think he really liked it.
Well, I'm not sure what else there is to say. I'll probably be calling you around 10:00 ish Arizona time. Not sure exactly, but it will be in the morning.
I got a package from Grandma B., and I wasn't sure if I was suppose to open it or not. I figured I'd wait to be safe, lol.
By the way, who wrote the crazy sugar plum fairy story? lol.
Love you all and I'll *TALK* to you all soon. ;-)
--Jason