It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas...!

So first off, here is what we are doing...

Later this week, we are leaving to drive to the mission home. We will stay the night there (or in a nearby missionary apt) and all 200+ missionaries will be at the mission home for a "Christmas Conference" (aka Christmas party). :) Sis E says it's pretty much the best. The Elders will be having an ugly tie exchange and the Sisters were supposed to have an ugly accessory exchange, but due to the common complaint that "we don't have anything ugly," it has been changed to a scarf exchange! :) hahaha! Good thing I have like 17 of those!

 

Then we proselyte on Christmas Eve until 6 and after that are going over to the B's house, so that will be fun. Christmas day we have district meeting. Then we're going over to the H's at 2 for dinner and stuff. (That's the same family we ate Thanksgiving with). Sister E is going to Skype first and I'll Skype after! Yayyy!!! :D The first presidency has asked us to keep it 40 minutes or less. :) So excited. 

This week's been pretty crazy. Yesterday at church was interesting... We taught Gospel Principals. Here are a few things that happened:

-(during the prayer) "....so we don't have to stay in hell for all eternity..." (Brother M: enough said!)

 Here are a few other "quotable" from previous Sundays:

Speaker in sacrament meeting: "Is Mormonism a cult?"

Brother W: "Yes sir!!"

A comment in Gospel Principals: "Back when I was married to a devil worshiper..."

Last night, we also went out and tried to find some less actives. One house we were at had big huge scary dogs that I thought were going to devour me. They didn't, but they still were scary. We walked around the house trying to find the front door (super sketchy, in all honesty) and only found a back door that we knocked at. No one answered. An hour later, we realized our phone was missing. After retracing our steps and saying a lot of prayers, we found ourselves back at the dark, scary dog house in the country. Pretty quickly, this huge truck pulled up and this man was there and started questioning us because he pretty much thought we were trying to rob the house. We tried to explain the situation and he didn't really trust us, but let us look for the phone. So yeah... interesting and pretty embarrassing night!!!

(Ash never said what happened to the phone but just sent this picture.)

We also had interviews on Friday and training by the AP's. Elder H (a previous zone leader) and Elder T gave a really amazing training. They talked about obedience and discussed our responsibility as missionaries and the principal of accountability. We did some pretty fun role plays too. Meetings and role-playing are like my favorite thing. And role playing in meetings... the best!! ha ha! It's fun though, and I have been working very hard the past few days to be exactly obedient. I've learned (and am learning still) that there are no short cuts to missionary work. You have to be obedient all the time and follow the process set up by leaders. In my interview, President W said that the sole purpose of the 12 apostles and prophet is to build up the Kingdom of God on earth. So, when they ask us to do something, whether it's the mission schedule, For the Strength of Youth standards, food storage or whatever it may be, even if it's small, we need to follow that. Everything that they ask us to do, including those things, are to build up the Kingdom of God on earth.

-Ashlyn