Winter is here.... 11/13/2017

     Well, winter has finally decided to come, all at once. We went to bed on Saturday night, and it was like 40 degrees, when we woke up, there was about 4" of snow, and it was rather cold out. And right now it's about 20 degrees and snowing, and it will probably remain that way until about April. So, my first New York winter has officially begun, and I have the opportunity to get the NY snow, and the Canadian temperatures. Tracting is already getting even more awesome...

     On a kind of unrelated note, I reached my 4 month mark yesterday. Which is rather crazy. I feel like I left my house maybe 3 weeks ago, yet I'm already 1/6 done. In about 3 weeks I'll be moving out of our humble abode in Massena, and getting transferred somewhere clear down at the south of the mission. So that will be exciting, I love the North Country, but this transfer has been rather slow... Like, we've tracted upwards of 17 streets, probably close to 150 houses, and picked up 2 investigators...  We've spent a ton of time tracting, had a ton of cancelled appointments, and a couple of our investigators who seemed to be fairly interested, have disappeared completely. There are a lot of "snowbirds" who head to Florida for the winter, and I guess they didn't think to tell us. So, it's been fairly slow on the missionary work front. But, we're workin hard and slowly moving forward.

     This week has been a fun one. Tuesday we spent a long time tracting, trying potentials, and creating and filling out teaching records. So that was fun. We had a great lesson with Ashley. Ashley lives next door to us, and has been taught a few times in the past, but lost contact and interest. However, she now is expressing a sincere desire to be baptized and come to church, and we've put her on date to be baptized, and we're doing the best we can to teach her often. She doesn't have a cell phone, and we can't teach her at her house. So we do a lot of phone tag with the Palkki's, as they message her on Facebook, and relay to us what she said. It's a struggle, but it's coming along. The biggest disappointment in this phone tag happened on Sunday. Ashley was planning on coming to church, and Sister Palkki was going to pick her up. Ashley said she waited outside for 15 minutes, then went to wait inside because it was freezing, Sister Palkki waited out front, then knocked on her door, and when nobody answered, she left. However, I think Sister Palkki knocked on the front door, and considering it's an apartment building and Ashley lives on the third floor, I'm afraid we didn't quite reach her. So that was a bummer, and we have to push her baptism back a week, so we can make sure she's taught and makes it out to church. But she's still interested. So that's good. 

     On Wednesday and Thursday, we went on blitz with the ZL's. To start the day, we attended the ribbon cutting ceremony of the Potsdam Taco Bell. We were given free taco coupons by Taco Bell's director of marketing in NY. Very nice lady. We also snuck into the picture they took of the ceremonial ribbon cutting. I don't know if we were supposed to be in it, nor do I care. Because the picture basically consists of the owner, the manager, some board members, and 4 missionaries who love tacos. If that isn't good publicity for the Church, then I don't know what is. After Taco Bell, we visited Brother Sterling. He made us a huge thing of homestyle macaroni, and had a TON of his "vintage flashbacks" that involved me, Hill, Wallentine, and Manley, serving in every war since WWI. We also did a stint in the Cowboys vs Indians era. Wow. I wish I could tell the stories, however I feel as though they may be inappropriate for a public email. So you'll have to hit me up when I'm home. Just know that we love Brother Sterling, and he is doing everything he knows to be right, and sometimes, he goes off on an incredible tangent. Each visit is like a roller coaster ride, only better. He's lonely, and loves when we visit, and we love to visit. So it's perfect. For the rest of the Blitz, Elder Wallentine and I went and did service at the Animal Shelter. Which is awesome. We get there, fold some towels and blankets, then we take a dog to a dog park and play fetch with it as we talk to people. After that we went to the Asian Buffet. I don't know if that place is even that good, but I'm always hungry and Chinese food is good, so we love it. For the rest of the evening we went around and OYM'ed people, and then had a lesson with a recent convert. She is one of the most solid people I've met. (Solid is being used as the missionary adjective to describe the interest/activity level of gators and members.) We taught her about Prophets, and had a great conversation. And she invited me and Elder Hill to dinner tonight. So that was awesome. Thursday morning we went to SUNY Potsdam, one of the colleges in the town, and "tabled." It's kind of like a trade show booth, except it's for Jesus. It's cool, not a ton of people stopped and actually talked, but a fair number took cards and books and pamphlets. To end the blitz, we took our lunch at the Tactics Escape Room. It's a tradition started by the AP's, we skip either lunch or dinner, and take the time to do an Escape Room. It's pretty incredible. 

     After the blitz, the rest of our week consisted of cancelled lessons, a dinners with the Marsey's, DD, and the Palkki's. Then lots of tracting. I guess the people here are changing with the seasons. Because they went from awfully friendly and willing to listen, to slamming their doors in our faces. The fact that it get's dark around 4:30 doesn't help either. We knock and people say "what on earth are you doing out this late? Don't knock on this door again." Well alright ma'am, sorry. My watch says 6:00 but your attitude says 11:00. I also love it when we say "We're going around sharing a message about Jesus Christ, could we share that with your family?" and they say "no thanks, we're Christian." If any of you could explain to me how that possibly makes sense... Because... Christians are all about Jesus. So like, how can they being saying no to talking about Jesus, like, that's their guy... I don't get it, oh well. I actually love tracting, and even though we haven't seen a ton of success, we are out, working hard, and people see it, and maybe one day they'll stop us and ask us what we're all about. As for now, we're planting seeds. A lot of them.

Thank you all for the love and support. And to anyone I've told I will be writing them a letter, please add like a week and a half to the time I say I'll write it. Life gets awfully busy and tiring. I'll get back to the apartment and plan on writing like 4 letters, then I'll start one, fall asleep, and be busy for like 4 days in a row. So please be patient. I'm workin on it. Plus I think it's a good exercise, because I'm sure we could all use a little more patience. ;)

Love you guys!

Here's the Taco Bell picture, with the VIP's, and the missionaries. I'm top left.