October 22, 2012

Hey Family!

Everyone in their costumes looked great ha-ha, looks like a lot of fun!!! So I got my absentee voting thing all done, I voted for all the republicans ha-ha but for the yes and no and for or against I wasn't sure what to put? So I left it blank, hope that’s ok! :) It'll be interesting to see who wins the elections! You can tell its getting close because the amount of signs are increasing! George definitely looks a lot smaller, that’s cool about his show! Really sad to hear the ward will be splitting...I wonder how they will split it? New callings for everyone, one thing I can say is that God knows exactly what He is doing and when He is gonna do it.

This week has been pretty good. Our 'gators are doing really good. I don’t know if you remember from last week I talked how one of the families (Erick and fam) didn't make it to church and we thought it was the wife etc etc.. Well we talked to them and had a great lesson, and the wife was just trying to make the husband feel comfortable going to the evangelicos because his parents are leaders there. But he told us how he doesn't feel right going there and that he feels way better going to our church. So they committed to go yesterday and they didn't disappoint! It was seriously the best feeling. Diego also went and it was also great. Diego our investigator actually invited us to dinner this night! Pretty sweet gator.

Saturday night was Dia de la hispanidad for our ward! It was really fun and we spent most of our efforts this past week inviting people to make it. Erick and his family made it and they all got special haircuts for church! Ha-ha super great family, really wanting to change and do better. Diego and his wife also made it. They had foods from everyone’s country and put on a show and danced their culture! I really enjoyed it.

We had a crazy thing happen this week. The other week we were knocking and we knocked this one door and we asked if we could come in and they guy just stood there with the door open. We were like can we come in, and he just nodded. There were about 10 people inside and no one said anything all just stared at us, pretty awkward. So we were like can we come back another time ha-ha and they were like yeah. So we went back I think friday evening with one of the youth from our ward (he's gonna look Stephen up on facebook) we knocked and this little 5 year old opened and just stared again, no talking or anything! Finally about 5 minutes later a guy came and was like awkard but let us in. So we started teaching the first lesson and with my preferrals I notice this little 5 year old is naked! I tried to stay focused on the guy. I didn’t understand how the dad was ok with that!!! hahah pretty scarring if ya'll catch my drift.

Last night for dinner the Drawsbecks invited us over again. It was really good, and they accommodated to my gluten free needs nicely. Their son on his mission has a really bad peanut allergy so they understand food problems really well. After dinner I guess they realized I was still hungry so they whipped me up another omelet right there on the spot! It was super good and friendly. Ha-ha the mom tried really hard to give me an epipen just for emergencies but the dad wouldn't let her because it was a kinda old and he didn't think it'd even work, but yeah super great loving family! I hope ya'll are nice to any missionaries around there.

We had Zone Conference this week which was really good. They really focused on asking inspired questions and listening. It was really good, and members made us lunch. Zone Conferences are 6 hours long!!! If ya'll can believe that ha-ha wowzers. But one thing that was really cool is that Pres talked about the age change and what that means for us. Right now we have about 190 missionaries in this little mission and we're expected to have 250 because of the change!!! Also there are only 5 spanish sisters and we will be getting 5 new by December which means every hermana here now will be training, even the 2 hermanas who came out with me! Pretty crazy training already! Pretty exciting news. They said that they're expecting a ton throughout the whole world, I can't remember the exact number but it’s pretty mind blowing and so great how the army of God is increasing. How does Stephen feel about it? Is he planning on going or what?

Yesterday in church the First counselor spoke and Elder Ochoa had to translate, I felt bad because the 1st counselor would talk for about a minute then let elder Ochoa translate which is really hard to translate with so much material! Poor guy but he did great! His message was how on November 17th this stake has everyone who holds a temple recommend needs to go to the temple that night. The stake pres has received strong revelation on that for some reason. So they are really stressing how important it is that every endowed member gets to the temple at that certain time. It’s really cool and makes you wonder if maybe something crazy might happen, but we could speculate all we want about crazy things ha-ha.

Well I'm doing really good. This transfer only has 2 weeks left which is crazy how fast it’s gone. I hope we stay one more because that’s when we have all our people on date to be baptized! I hope we can both be here to see it happen. But God knows all. But I'm praying ;) hehe.

Well I love you all so much, for today we have a zone activity which we are doing pumpkin carving!!! then after Elder Kessler and Rith are taking me and Ochoa to the Cheesecake Factory because his mom sent him and gift card there because it’s his favorite and it was his b-day, I'm looking forward to it :D

Love you all, stay strong and serve one another . Let me know about all the changes happening with work and church, as well as Real Salt Lake ;) PLayoffs coming up hope they win it all!!! Love ya'll

Con Amor,

Elder Andrew Lifferth

PS no new countries... well I hope Stephen and big Mike are still planning on serving missions, God needs your service. God needs you to feed HIs sheep like Elder Holland's talk says. Pray about :) love ya'll!!!