EMAIL: WEEK 19 - "New Companion, Scheduled Baptism and #lighttheworld"

WRITTEN: December 6th, 2016

 Hey Family!

This week has been all sorts of fun. First set of new is that I got a new companion! Elder Johnson from Idaho. Pretty cool kid. We do share some common interests thought! He did a little FlyFishing and fly tying before the mission so that's pretty sweet! He is just one more transfer older than me so we are both relatively new. He's a super humorous guy so we get along alright so that's good.

This week has been pretty busy? I'm now leading out our area so it's been quite an adventure!

As you all know this week on Thursday it became a start of a new month December, the last month of this year. Also something super awesome started, the new church initiative #LIGHTtheWORLD. It's a super sweet opportunity to serve others and share the gospel. We've been out on the streets engaging the people to serve other people in even the smallest ways. Serving people is so much fun. One of the actives we did was going around our church building and picking up trash and cleaning up the streets. We invited over 200 people to come, and the whole ward to come and help but only one person came so we got to we got to change something to get the ward pumped. The ward here is pretty darn lazy and we only have a handful of members who are super converted and willing to help with the missionary work. We also helped a member paint their living room. Saturday we went around journal square (a place in jersey city where there are lots and lots of people) and we walked around with #LIGHTtheWORLD cards with comments written on the back and we went around giving them our and inviting others to do the same. Super fun little activity, hopefully we touched some hearts. We also wrote thank you notes to our parents and posted it on Facebook for the world to see:)

We had district meeting with all our new missionaries. I've been called to be assistant to he District leader? Not sure what exactly that means, never heard of that kind of calling before but it's a little interesting. At the end of the week everyone calls me for their numbers and then I total them up (with my super awesome math skills) and them send them to the zone leaders. 

Some awesome news it that we have a baptism next Sunday! His name is Santos and he's been waiting over a year to be baptized (had to wait to be married first). He's getting married on Saturday and then the baptism on Sunday. He asked me to baptize him and I can't wait!

Also some more awesome news is that's it's getting closer and close to Christmas which means closer and closer until we get to FaceTime eachother! Christmas is going to be so fun!

It's been super awesome this past week. It turns out that I know a lot more Spanish then I thought I did. Now that elder Jordan is gone I've had to talk a lot more haha. It's still a bit rusty but I'm working on it:)

Thanks so much for all your thoughts and prayers! Love you all! Onto next week:)

Love,

Elder Marz