One month in!

Wow I honestly cannot believe that it's been a month. It's crazy how fast time has flown and how blurred together the days are. I guess I'll try and start from the beginning of the week. On Monday, we had a zone p-day. It's basically where the zone gets together and plays sports and President Wilson comes by to do some personal interviews.  But I had a lot of fun! The mission invented a game called Oompah.. It's basically a mix between basketball, ultimate frisbee, and football. Essentially you play ultimate frisbee with a football in a gym trying to shoot hoops. It's a lot harder than it sounds but still super fun.

On Tuesday we went on exchanges, which in a simple term means switch up the companionship with the zone leaders to see how the companionship is doing. I got privileged enough to go with Elder
Wagner, who is probably one of the best tracing missionaries I've met. I was able to pick up so much from going on exchanged with him and I felt like it actually started to mold me as a missionary. That experience changed the entire week. If I could describe the amazing week Elder Hudson and I had I would use a couple words like: everybody in sight, doubled our investigators, and hardest I've worked so far.

Wednesday we went tracting, and before we started knocking Elder Hudson said a short prayer and said "we know by faith that we will find 5 new investigators and everyone will be open hearted. We knocked a complex and ended up placing all three book of mormons, and we made an appointment for another. So we left feeling pretty good! We went to dinner and then out to appointments with a member. All of the appointments we had fell through, so the last minute we thought we would go try an investigator again, because we missed him earlier. We pulled up and I saw a guy standing out on the porch, next to the investigators house, looking at us pretty funny. So instead of knocking I went straight over and struck up a conversation. Most kind hearted person I've every contacted. He was raised in New York on the streets. He's seen people killed and he himself has been shot and he vowed to stop the violence and started an anti-gang movement called "40 Wolves". Their whole goal was to show kids growing up that there was a better life than gang life. Not even 2 minutes into the our
introduction as missionaries he said "just before y'all pulled up I prayed to god about my current situation and for him to help me out. And I think God maybe heard me this time." So it turns out that Larry had been in contact with the missionaries a while ago in New York and he decided he wasn't interested. He said he kept close to god all throughout his life, and after running into us he is now VERY interested in the gospel and is starting to progress towards baptism.

So we ended up hitting our goal of 5 investigators, and my testimony has never been stronger. The rest of the week was non-stop contacting. We continued to grow our investigator album, and it will keep growing. Hopefully next week is as prosperous.

On New Year's Eve we met with the Zone Leaders and had a fun little celebration, that had to end around 9:30. But we popped open the sparkling juice and toasted to the new year!

So. That's just a small part of the week. I have so many experiences I could sit down and tell to you, but I'll keep it short because I have to reply to other emails. So in summary, this week I became a Preach My Gospel missionary. I still have a lot to learn and I know that but I took such a big step this week and I can't wait how future weeks pan out.

Love you all and miss you! Hope everything is all well at home and thanks for the pictures! Also have a good time at school! Till next week~

-Elder Caleb Gibbons