Hello from the Colorado, Colorado Springs Mission
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| My District |
This last week was fantastic! I had so much fun preparing for the Christmas!
We got to go caroling at a retirement
home and they were so excited to see us there and enjoy the Christmas Spirit
that comes with singing. I also got to
spend Christmas Eve with my district having a Christmas party. We had a Secret Santa gift exchange. I had drawn our district leader as the one I'd
buy a gift for. I thought long and hard to
figure out what he might want and ended up giving him the best gift of all; a
$5 Starbucks gift card. They have
awesome hot chocolate and we frequent there. Sister Harrop in our district had me for a Secret
Santa and I got a bag full of all the stuff she had that she didn't want
anymore (since she goes home in 6 weeks). There was a lot of hair products, cologne,
drawing supplies, playing cards, and candy. It was the perfect gift! We stayed the night at the District Leader's apartment
Christmas Eve and opened our gifts together Christmas morning. It was so fun, and reminded me of Christmas
morning at home. We spent Christmas day at
the Carter's (a family in our ward) where each of us received a 5 lbs. Hershey
Bar! I don't even want to open it because
it's too daunting! It's larger than a
Laptop and is over 11,000 calories. We
spent the day playing pool, ping pong, and we all got to Skype our families. It was so great to hear from you all and see
your faces! I was really excited to hear
from you all and was glad so many of you were able to be there! Overall the week was great, but we didn't have
too many opportunities to visit with people in our area. Most of the Ward was gone for the holidays and
our investigators had scattered. I really hope this next week will be a lot
more productive!
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| That is a lot of chocolate! |
Well this week was definitely an improvement from last week
as far as missionary work goes. We got a
new investigator! He's a senior in high school
and is dating one of the young women in our ward. We taught him this week and brought one of the
Priests in our ward with us! That's a first
since I've been here! Our investigator
has no background in religion and his first time to go to any Church. He seems really cool though and has a lot of
goals he wants to accomplish in life. He's
definitely headed in the right direction! One of our other investigators that
we had a little while back that had stopped talking to us and wasn't interested
anymore started coming to church again! He's
come 2 weeks in a row and we're really excited to hopefully pick up where we
left off! Sadly, one of our progressing investigators
is now in Prison. He finally had his
appearance in court and it didn't go well. We don't know how long his sentence is but we
hope he still had a positive experience with the church, and might continue working
with missionaries later. We had a good
New Years Eve with the Olson's (a family in our ward) who fed us tons of food
and we played apples to apples with their kids. I've made a New Years resolution to start
exercising everyday (excluding Sundays) and so far I'm right on track! This week I did something I thought I'd never
do. I let one of the sister missionaries
in our district cut my hair.
She's never
been to Beauty School and had only cut hair 3 times
before then. I'm sending pictures so you
can let me know what you think!? I think
it looks fine! Especially because it was
free! It got really cold this week, the
high temperature for last Tuesday was 4 degrees, and with wind chill it got as
low as -30 degrees! Yikes! I stayed inside when I could! It's supposed to get a little warmer this week
but it never quite feels "warm" here anymore. This is the last week of the transfer. I will have officially been in my area for 6
months! My guess is that I'm going to be
transferred to a new area, but you never know! I will find out on Saturday if I'm leaving and
on Monday I learn where and with whom I will be serving with! I will keep you updated! I'm not looking forward to packing all of my
stuff! Hopefully my next area has a car!
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| Rate my haircut! |
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| The other side! |
I love you all so much and thank you for all the support and
kind words you bring. The Holiday season is a weird one to spend away from home,
but I am having a wonderful time here serving the Lord! Please keep me in your prayers and I'll do the
same for you! Have a great week and I will
talk to you soon!
5 things that made me smile:
1. My haircut, watching the process was excruciating! It looked terrible partway through the cut but
it came out really good!
2. Elder Mogle got hit in the face with a Cue ball when we
were playing pool and he was worried he broke one of his teeth, but he'sfine.
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| Having Fun. To cold to go outside! |
3. When we asked the Priests if one of them wanted to come
with us, most of them made excuses to get out of teaching, but one was so excited
to come with us and really participated in our lesson. It was perfect and he's so excited to go on a
mission and come out with us again!
4. Sister Harrop in our district can't swallow pills very
easily. It usually takes until the pill
dissolves on her tongue for her to get it down. She was trying to take a pill in the hallway
of our apartment complex and almost choked and smashed her head on the corner
of a fire extinguisher box and split her head open. She was rolling on the ground laughing, same
as we were (She's fine, I promise).
5. Elder Buxton bought a sling shot last week and wants to
spend a P-day going hunting for squirrels and to cook one up. I think we're doing that today so I will let
you know if we get anything!
God is Great!
Elder Gillingwater
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