DECEMBER 16, 2013

Dear Family,
This week has been really great. For the past couple of weeks we have been trying to work with the less actives in our ward. I think we have enough members to make a stake if everyone would come! It’s crazy. We have been meeting with the Dunsmore family a lot recently, they have come to church now for the last 2 weeks and we meet with them twice a week. They are an amazing family and they are excited to prepare to go to the temple. We have been trying to meet some new less actives. We stopped by a home on Saturday night; the Tozers. Brother Tozer came out and told us he wasn't a member anymore, he was catholic. Not really interested. Then last night we got a call from a sister Tozer. She was asleep when we stopped by and apologized that he didn't let us in. She had no idea there was even a church in Newark and she has lived there for 5 years! She is going to call us today to set up a time when we can come over for dinner.
We have had this thing going on while I have been here that anytime we go on an exchange, nothing good happens in our area. Appointments fall through or investigators drop us. Things like that. This exchange was different. Elder Barker came to our area with me and of course I was nervous. I always feel like I don't know the area well enough. We taught a lesson to a less active in our ward and then to a new investigator. We had a member with us and we had a few minutes so we stopped by a less active that we hadn't seen in a long time. She answered the door and let us in. We invited her to the Christmas party and she came!
The next day we had no appointments in the morning. We stopped by 2 less actives and they both let us in to teach them. It was amazing. At our Christmas party later that night, we had several less active members come including the Woolseys who we haven't seen in weeks. There was also a sister who is deaf that I have never met (she might be teaching a sign language class, soo cool). We had a lot of less actives there and an investigator, Max. He is young single adult age though so we need to hand him off to the other Elders. Overall this week was really good. I was excited to get a package from Grandma and Grandpa Parker! I just got a box right before I left the apartment from Aunt Karen. Everything has been going really well. The new Elders in our district are great, we also got a senior couple in our district this week, I haven't met them but they are in the new castle ward. I love you all! Thank you for all of your love and support!