Merry Christmas 2011

Alright so this week was awesome, still going through some transfer pains and we have the numbers to prove it.  I guess when I was with Elder Karl we didn't think about the future that much and just the here and the now so now we don't have much of a teaching pool because well, we baptized all but one of them, and she's out of town now, and oh yeah the Crooks almost dropped us but we went over there towards the end of the week and talked to brother Crook and he voiced some of his concerns that I don't think would ever have come up if Elder Karl and I had continued to teach them in the way that we were, it was just awesome to be lead by the spirit in what I needed to say and what I needed to ask.  He was crying after we finished saying the prayer.  That was cool, but he didn't end up coming to church which really kind of stunk.  But with having such a small teaching pool we've been tracting everyday for at least 1 hour which is something that I never did with Elder Karl, I think I put in 3 hours tracting with Elder Karl and with Elder Cobbley we've already put in twice that this week, so we will have a good teaching pool this coming week and in the future, though with Christmas I think its going to be hard to gett member presents and things like that.  This week we had a couple of days where the Lord was just trying our patience, but my faith was increased on those days so much I could hardly believe it.  We've also got a bunch of part member families and return appointments coming out of the wood work that we will probably be working with.  I'm not sure what time I'll be calling on Christmas, probably between 12:00 and 2:00 on Christmas day our time.  So you can probably plan on that, we are just going to call on our cell phone from our apartment.  Plans for Christmas though are as follows, well we've got dinner at the Raney's which should be interesting, I don't know if I told you but they are a family where the parents can't have kids so they've adopted like 5 and now almost 6 boys, they also are the ones we celebrated Thanksgiving with.  Not my favorite family in the ward but there alright.  It will be good.  We've also been invited to a couple of other peoples homes on Christmas day which will be pretty good, just a little weird and different.  Yes I have gotten the packages, they are sitting under our tree and I'm so excited to open them.  But Elder Cobbley says that he'll rat me out if I open them early.  Well other experiences from this week, lets see.  Well it really kind of stunk, my second baptism Joseph has been doing really well, then all of a sudden we were going to stop by there the other day and he basically told us that he can't got to church anymore.  Well we went over there yesterday and he said that his sisters would disown him if he continued to go to church, he said that they were afraid for his life.  I just hope that he makes the right decision I really hope that he does.  But if he doesn't thats his own free agency and we can't take that away from him.  Just kind of depressing, but he'll be ok, I hope.  Well thats about it for this week, I'll email each of you indiviually.  Merry Christmas and I'll talk to you on Sunday. 

Love

Elder Todd Glad