Happy New Year . . .

January 4, 2015

Dear Family,

Sorry for not being able to write this weekend.  It seems like there is always some sort of situation that we have to deal with!!  Today we had some missionaries get attacked and robbed, so we have been working with that.  They are fine and no one got hurt, so that is good!

I hope that you all have had a good last few days, enjoying the beginning of your new year!!  2015 is officially here.  I hope you all had a great time, and that you are enjoying the last little bit of your vacation!!

So this week was anything but a vacation for me!!  We have had a ton of things going on lately.  The President has had his son and daughter here for this last little while, so they have been doing lots of things, going out and teaching as well as spending some tourist time!  So we met them a little while ago.  His daughter served a mission in Brazil, so she goes out and teaches in Portuguese, which people who speak spanish can understand, and she can understand spanish as well from her Portuguese knowledge, so she was teaching.  The president's son served in France, so he has been teaching the French investigators.  His girlfriend also came, but her mission experience didn't really help her out at all... she served in Taiwan.  But so anyway, all of them have been going out and teaching lately.

We have spent the majority of the week running people around to the doctor.  One Elder hurt his ankle, this time the other one, We have an elder here, who had a small heart failure, so we have been going around with him trying to get everything figured out!!

On New Year's Eve, no one was feeling in a very receptive mood, so we went and talked to the members and helped them to understand how they can help us with mission work in this area.  It seems like it went fairly well.  Then we went back to the house and I went to bed.  I just wasn't feeling New Year's this year...  I set an alarm and woke up at 12 to welcome in the new year. The next day we wanted to do something cool, so we went to every cool spot we could think of.... and EVERYTHING was closed!!  So, we ate at Carl's Jr. and went back to the office.  We went to play Frisbee, and it got too dark too soon!  So we went to buy stuff to play ping pong... and the store was closed!!  It is like saying that WalMart was closed... it just doesn't happen!!  So, defeated, we went back to the office!!

We just keep working here.  It is something that is hard, but it is going to be a huge benefit to me in the future.  It is crazy to think how fast the time is going by, and a little sad at the same time...  I just realized something...  That in less than six months, I will be home.  It is very weird to think about.  But, I am happy at the same time because it shows progress in my life, and in six months it will be time to move on to a new phase of life!!

So we have a cool investigator named Maria.  She works in the home of our ward mission leader.  She has had a lot of questions about the plan of salvation because her mother recently died.  We have been trying to help her understand the plan in order so that she will be able to accept the answer to her actual question, which is "Where is my mother now?"  It is a principal of teaching and of life that we all need to learn.  Everything has a divine order to it...  We can't run before we walk.  There is order to all of life, and we reach our final goals by learning the order and setting goals to accomplish each part of the order!!  Definitely something that I will need to continue to apply after the mission!!

Our big plan for this year is to reactivate lots of people!!  We have the goal to reactivate at least 2 people every month while we are here in the office!!  Hopefully we can reach that goal!!  I actually need to make some phone calls to some of these people to be able to see if they would be open to receive the gospel again!!  Hopefully this goes well!!

Well, I love you all so much!!  Happy New Year!!

Love you all,

Elder Garrett McEwan