Hey Everybody its a Green Christmas or Grey if you want

Hello All,

This Christmas was great we had a week of alot of meetings and some proselyting time. A companion I get to tease about being trunky(he goes home on Wednesday). Members were nice to us, Call home to Family, and Lots and Lots of Candy and Ham. I think the ham thing is kind of funny. Who decided that Turkey and ham were the "festive" Meats and that those are the one you are supposed to eat on Thanksgiving and Christmas? So we had a lot of ham this week and I want to blame them for even more sugar(I don't hate ham, I love ham and that is the problem). Oh yeah this week was transfer calls. and.... I will tell you throughout the letter who my new companion is.  I am staying( so if a letter has a number next to it that is a letter of his name. Yes they are in order. i.e. (1Elder))So this is going to be fun. So first off thank you for all of the letters and packages this week(shout out to the Lindstroms Thank you!). I really enjoyed opening them all(maybe I opened them on Christmas maybe not(2D). This last week had a lot of meetings. We started out with the Zone Conference. It was really cool, President talked about how to come closer to Christ and then We got to practice on how to teach without a pamphlet. I think that this training will really help people with teaching more to the needs of the person. I think that pamphlets while useful(3e) are really for people that will most benefit from a pamphlet so that is why I like this training. So that was awesome but what was really awesome was when the next day we  went to the Christmas program which was really cool lots of Christmas songs and other stuff like good talks. We (4w) also did a white elephant which was a lot of fun in the fact everything had to be under 5$ or found in your apartment(someone got a popcorn cart... I guess they found it in their apartment.) Then we had to drive home through traffic(Yeahhh) Who would would want to live in California, where everything is super expensive and You have to drive for 3 hours to get to work. I mean people have nice cars here(5i) but come on. It really is terrible. Then we had a super awesome miracle happen to us. Julian Got baptized!!! it was Great. and I got to baptize him. He decided he wanted to be baptized on Monday and so the rest of the week was frantic trying to set up his baptism in time. I was really nervous but it worked out because he got baptized.That was the real miracle this week and it all worked(6t) out. It even distracted me from christmas which is saying something. And I just learned that for new years eve we are watching Star Wars:The Force Awakens(this was a surprise) and Zootopia. This is going to be so great(7t). I get my new companion tomorrow and I am ready for more missionary work. So Lets Do it!!(you will only get that if you have figured out my companions name.

Elder Stokes


Here is the photo of Joshua speaking to us on Christmas.  It was awesome!!

The Letter of Today

Hey everybody,

This last week has been awesome but really kind of empty. Its really interesting to have two wards and 1 of the ward's investigators are doing awesome and are progressing well. While the other ward's investigators are all out of town. So that makes half of our Ward meetings make us feel awesome and the other half is making us feel like we need to do more. It really helps you stay humble and is helping to work on both our teaching and our finding methods alot.

We had a really cool thing happen this week. So we were doing exchanges with the Zone leaders this last Wednesday which also happened to be the day of District Meeting and District lunch. I was with Elder Khamvongsouk( also known as Elder K.) we did some service then went to district lunch at a Chinese place. While we were at lunch we were paying for our meal when 2 ladies asked us about our beliefs. well we answered her questions and kind of had a lesson right there. and let me tell you, there is a reason we are called to teach 2 by 2 and not 6 by 6. It was kind of messy and Elder K. had to try and bring it to a summary so that we wouldn't leave them with tons of confusing info. But the Brentwood 3rd elders set a return appointment with them so that should hopefully help.Then we had District mtg. and the training was on getting an investigator to say a kneeling prayer at the end of the lesson. Then later that day me and Elder K. were in a lesson with James where we invited him to pray, well it did't seem like he wanted and he said he was nervous about doing it in front of us. Well with a lot of the use of the training that we got earlier that day we were able to help him pray and even though it took a long time he said a kneeling prayer with us. And then he came to church on Sunday so that is a really cool experience of using the training to help our investigators right after we received the training. So that was a very fun exchange.

We also took Julian to the baptism yesterday, but we weren't able to talk to him after words so we just set a appointment for this evening so that will hopefully go well and he will feel like he is ready to be baptized.

I can't believe it is so close to Christmas and I can't wait. Thank you for all the packages and Merry Christmas. 

Elder Stokes

Some Pictures ( District and Apartment)

Hey All

Hello Everybody,

This Week has been awesome as you can see by the pictures we do have some fun. We also have been working like crazy but there are so many people just getting busier and busier. You can tell because people actually take the cards that we give to them just because they want us to go away faster. but quite a few of the people we are teaching will actually be in town for the holiday season so we will have people to teach.

We also hope that Julian will keep with the date that we set him for on the 24th of December. It will be so cool if he keeps it. he is kind of nervous for that date so we are taking him to a baptism this week and hopefully that will help him. 

We also able to find 2 new investigators this week. we started going over a list of Part member families in Brentwood and were able to teach the son of one of the ladies that is a member, we haven't met her yet so we are hoping that will go well. 

We also had a really great experience with James in that he really seem to be more interested in our message. when we first met with his wife(the member) he didn't even come into the room to be there for the lesson. So I have really seen the message change him.

So this week was cool. and it is just the beginning of the miracles to come.

Elder Stokes

Pics:

We had some cool activities

Make it snow(the ones with all the white) was last week

Bowling This week

December Stuff

Hey all,

So this last week has been super awesome. we are doing so great stuff in our area. Soon we will be teaching 5 possibly 6 part member families within the wards. I think that working with the part member families has been great, some don't like us, but they are usually more willing to listen to us then some other people. We got to go by one family, the Love's, and the owner of the place they live has llamas so that was awesome.

We had some great lessons this week, While we were thinking about what to teach Trina I had the impression that we should teach her about revelation, so we decided to do that. Then while we were studying for the lesson. E. McDonald said that it would be a good if we read from True to the Faith. And that is what we did with her and it was great. she said it was a lesson that she felt like she needed. we also had an awesome member there that was able to befriend her and help explain some the point that were in there.

We also were able to finally figure out a time when it would work for Jacob's Uncle to come in and Baptize him. So Jan 28th will be the date that he will be baptized.

Julian has been doing great during our lesson we committed him, a 10 year old, to fast for 2 meals and to think about his feelings for baptism. so that was cool.

We also were able to teach a boy named Henry that we have had a hard time getting a hold of. So we added him as a investigator and he is really interested. 

So that was our week of some of the great lessons we taught and so that is cool.

Hope you are all having a great Christmas

Elder Stokes

Photos:

We got a puzzle(1000 pieces)

Christmas tree!!!!

LLamas!!!