First order of business, congratulations are in order! Congrats go out to Chase Quinn (Ukraine) and David Jaramillo (Guatamala) for receiving their mission calls! If there are others, sorry I missed you. But that's crazy! Going to be tough for sure.
So this week... We went to the Oakland Temple. Is is BEAUTIFUL! Don't worry, I took pictures. I will be sending home my memory card this week and I have like 150-170 pictures on it I believe ranging from the MTC up until week 5 of being in Napa.
My first transfer is over in 2 weeks! That is so crazy to think I've been out almost 6 weeks! Week 5 is apparently the week everyone starts making predictions on who is being transferred and who is staying and whatnot. This will be Elder Marsh's 2nd transfer in Napa, so he is up in the air. It's a good possibility that he could leave, he could also stay though for a 3rd transfer. If that happened, he will have what is known as a "trunky" transfer. So much cool lingo here in the field. But what that means is that he'll be in a new area for his last transfer and "trunky" means like anxious to get home. So, if he got transferred to a new area in his last 6 weeks he'll get super trunky because he won't want to learn the area all over again. He goes home in June. But for me, I'll stay in Napa most likely. But anything can happen, so who knows. It'll be pretty intense if I get transferred though.
Okay, so this week...I get sidetracked a lot. But the area is starting to open up. We actually met like 3 of our goals for the week! We taught 15 lessons throughout the week, we have 3 or 4 progressing investigators, I think like 5 investigators and a lot of potential investigators. But this week was a good one -- people were home and we got to teach! We actually got a referral this morning from a family in our ward (finally!) and these people they gave us sound golden! There is a little 12 year old boy that says he knows that this church is true because of the way that he felt when he was talking about it to the members in our ward and he wants the priesthood! This is after I've been praying 2-4 days for a miracle too! God listens to us, it's true. However, this family doesn't live within our ward bounderies so technically we're supposed to hand them over to the missionaries in Napa 3rd ward (I'm in 2nd). But they're friends with members in our ward so we're going to teach them/baptize them. I'm really excited to teach them! We're seeing them later tonight so I'm anxious to see what happens! We've been teaching a whole lot of less actives as well which is always good. Trying to get them to come back to church.
But the weather has kinda sucked... and biking in it sucks worse. It has been cold all week plus super rainy. Friday is just rained ALL day. I was SOAKED! I was avoiding puddles and then I just thought to myself, "why am I avoiding puddles? I'm already soaked to the bone and I'm freezing." It was then I proceeded to go through the middle of puddles. It was a fun time. It was not fun taking off the super wet clothes. Think of church clothes and how not comfortable they are. Now take that and add a TON of water and soaked-ness. Yeah, that was Friday for me. It rained throughout the week and I was pretty wet, but not as wet as I was on Friday.
I don't really remember anything else significant that happened this week as goes to teaching and what not. Jessica is awesome (can't remember if I told you about her or not) but we continue teaching her. She has a ton of potential, she just needs to be taught the basics because she has no previous knowledge of Christ and His gospel. Then we have Greg who is also awesome and he was an investigator who dropped the missionaries before because they pushed him too hard but we're teaching him and just going super slow and reading out of the Book of Mormon and Bible. He'll get baptized eventually. He said that if he finds out that this is true he'll do whatever it takes. He has trouble accepting the Book of Mormon as scripture though, but the ONLY way to find out is if you read it and pray about it. It's pretty simple to find out actually...
So, today is P-day! We have a member that works up at a winery at the top of the mountains. The winery is called Antica, or something like that. But we went up there today and took a tour of the winery. It was BEAUTIFUL. We were at the top of the mountains and there was a small little valley at the top where they had all their vines and such and you would just look out and there are just acres and acres of lines of vines for grapes. This wine company as been owned by the same family for 26 generations!!!! CRAZY! We got to go into some caves where they have line after line of barrels for aging the wine. It was super neat and I have pictures, don't you worry. But we went up with 2/3 of our district. It was me, Elders Marsh, Olsen and Sharples and then we had 2 sister with us - Sisters Gorder and Tuifua. Olsen, Sharples and Gorder are from Utah and Sister Tuifua is from Tonga. Elder Marsh is from Maryland and I'm from either Ohio, Belgium, St. Louis or Provo. I tend to change it up a lot. I think Ohio is going to be my default from now on. Se we went on that tour today which was awesome and I got a ton of good pictures. Well, they're good from my perspective, it's up for interpretation.
So after that we went to our church building (the Stake Center) and the 4 elders played hide-and-seek. Haha, it was super fun. I enjoyed playing little kid games. I was surprised we were able to drive up that mountain. I'm still surprised we did that in a corolla. Let me tell you why. It was us - the 4 elders in the car. Marsh only weighs like 150, I weigh 225 and for the big boys - Sharples and Olsen are HUGE. Both of them are like 6'4" and Sharples weighs 250ish and Olsen about 290. BIG BIG missionaries. When we get into the car, it sinks down like 5 inches. It was funny to get out before them and then see how much the car lifted up when they got out. They're awseome though, super funny and whatnot.
So that was basically my week. If you have any questions and such tell my parents over fb or whatevs and they'll tell me through letters. I love letters. Or you could just send me a letter yourself.
This next week is going to fly by. We have Zone Conference tomorrow which takes about all day and the District Meeting Wednesday and then right after that meeting we are going on exchanges again. DL's have to go on exchanges every week with the elders in their district. Since Elders Sharples and Olsen are the only other elders in our District we go on exchanges with them every week. Last week I went up to St. Helena with Elder Sharples. It was a good experience. I got to be in a car again! =)
OH THAT REMINDS ME! I'm reading the New Testament now because I finished the Book of Mormon this last week. SWEET! So I'm gonna read the NT and read the Book of Mormon again in there as well, but not every day.
Things are great and I'm still loving it! This week should be a really good one and I'm looking forward to it! I love ya mom and dad! You can update Colin and Tanner for me because I don't wanna type all this stuff out again... Thanks! Have a super week and I can't wait to hear from you guys! Thanks for the short sleeve shirts too! You really have saved me from dying of sweating and making my clothes gross and melting in the heat that is sure to come. Talk to you next week!
Love,
Elder Edwards
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