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| I am ready for a bright, Hawaiian Christmas Day! |
We have been doing some great work here in Lincoln heights. We have lots of Swahili work as well as English work to do, and now we never have a moment with nothing to do (unless the 5 lessons we scheduled for the day all at once cancel on us. It has happened more than once now; but if it hadn't been for the fact we would not have been able to find some promising prospects.)
Most the people we have been finding at first seem like they want to meet with us and want to hear us out, or at least pretend they do. Once we return to talk with them again they tell us they forgot and are too busy at the moment to meet with us, then once we return again, then they don't even answer the door and ignore us, even though we know they are home. At least we have a large teaching pool already, we will have lots to do.
Speaking of, we have found some solid people to teach! Notwithstanding the great Swahili family's we already are working with, the English has been prospered considerably in the past week.
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| Enjoying some good childhood memories. (We were showing Elder Cohen Candy Land for the first time. It got pretty competitive at the 5th round) |
We walked up to this guy's front porch, and in his window there was a sign that said. "is there life after death? Trespass and find out☠️"
So once the guy came out (I'm going to call him Rick) we asked him about that sign, and if he actually believed if there was a life after death. He had told us that he was unsure; since the death of his mother he has wondered about the destination of her soul and if she was alright. We told him that we share a message from God, given to us to bring us peace of mind and joy of the soul. We also told that we know where we come from, where we go and why we are here in this life. We were able to set up a time to come back. Once the time for our lesson came, we were able to have a wonderful lesson with both Rick and his wife. It turns out Rick's mother knew some few parts of the Plan of Salvation already. She was spiritually lead and was able to discern them from the Bible and teach her son, so when we taught him he was like, " Oh, I already believe that..." for this and that all over the lesson.
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| Apple pie and glazed doughnut pancakes. These members feed me way to much, and way to well. |
Sorry if I had more time I would write something spiritual to share, but I lack the time.
I do apologize, I forgot to send last week's email and all the text above was that email. I will just add to this email and hopefully the plague that are described in it will not be added unto me.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
I don't know about you, but we were not able to have a white Christmas, in fact we had a wet Christmas, all the snow melted because it is so warm. (According to my African companion, it is freezing, 
he doesn't know what's coming. Right now it's only 40°F, during February last year it was - 30° plus windchill. )
We are teaching this guy who is struggling with smoking. He had been making good progress reducing his intake from 2 packs a day to only a few cigarettes a day. Then we told him that the time was now to quit and give up his cigarettes. He was not to enthusiastic about it, but he did give us what he had, (which we promptly threw in the trash when we got home) then we promised to visit him each night to strengthen him in his conviction. Things were going fine, until recently he stopped returning our calls and is no longer home when we visit him. We fear that he has broken into his old habit and gave in to his vice.
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| Not Bad, I still like the Festival of Lights Back in Utah better... |
We are brainstorming ideas to get with him again. He may be feeling guilt or shame. That is something we all feel when we break any of God's commandments, but that does not mean that there is not a remedy for this. God has promised us that so long as we return unto him he will remember our sins no more, and we can enjoy all the blessing a he has in store for us.
D&C 58:42
42 Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more.
We have been meeting lots of people that keep telling us to come back.... After the holidays 
. With how things go for us they may never be quite "ready for us to come over, we are so busy". We shall see how all these potentials go. I will keep you all posted if anything cool happens.
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| Add captionThe Joke of the Spokane Police Force |
We have been doing a lot of caroling lately. Boy they are so much more effective than just knocking on doors. The people feeling like they owe it to us to either talk to us or even have us over some other time.
We have gone out with our ward as well as our zones, but the coolest ones are when we go with our ward. Because we are teaching lots of Swahili people and quite a few of them are coming to church. We learned a Swahili Christmas Hymn! I have a video that I will send to my family, and hopefully they will find a way to share it with y'all. Anyways we all had a blast singing and getting to know more people. The kids were so excited to be knocking on doors. They ran to the next location with great enthusiasm each time we were going to another home.
We got Dave, the pastor, to come to our church last Sunday. However, he has certain conditions about that. The only one of note was that we had to go to his church on Christmas Eve for his special service. It was a bit of a surprise for me, because I have never before attended another church service in my life, so the drums and guitars were a bit unsettling for me, not to mention that we all got candles and stood up to sing with every song. We met quite a few interesting people there. While we talked with them, I kept reminding myself that I could not proselyte in another church (mission rules. Overall it was a decent experience (I just can't get over the band.)
Well, this had been a good Christmas for us, we were able to play Settlers of Catan and eat two great meals with two great families.
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| The Most food I have ever seen at one place at the same time that was not a store |
I hope you all have had a merry Christmas, and had the chance to remember the true meaning of Christmas.
Here is a nice little video that can help you if your struggling with the true meaning, if you are not struggling you should still watch it because it's a good share video:
The Reason Behind Christmas
Well the time has come for me to close. Be as it may, while we were caroling in big groups, and I must confess we stepped all over the governors grass. We're no Angels but they all loved our singing.
Thank you all for your great messages and responses to my emails, I hope you all have a good night's sleep after all those sweets.
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