Our area is really starting to pick up! We taught 9 lessons last week and have several more planned for the upcoming week. Some are not progressing, but others are progressing. And we have our first baptismal date for Jan 2! We have another investigator who wants to get Baptized but can't for a few months. He is awesome though and loves God and the Gospel. He brought his son to Church on Sunday and we might start teaching him too! It is so cool to see the work progressing. We also gave a couple blessings this week. Both were really cool and we could feel the spirit there. We went on exchanges this week. I went with another elder to their area. They had several awesome investigators there that I wanted to take home! But we will find ours soon, I just know it!! But other than that we are having less time to tract which is a really good thing because that means we are getting more appointments. And the ward is awesome! The bishop is super supportive and keeps giving us names and we also have a really cool new member couple in the ward. They are just so cool and took us out for dinner last night. They love to talk and are so funny! But they both have super strong testimonies and are just great people.
Speaking of dinner we heard about the Terrorist Attack in Paris last night. Awful thing. But we just have to put our faith in the Lord and continue on with our lives. These kind of things are going to happen, and it sucks, but we cant let them drag/slow us down.
At the training yesterday we received a lot of instruction on how to be better missionaries. Both me and my companion received "spiritual chastisement" and promptings on what we can improve in our own lives. He also said something really profound. It was something along the lines of:
"If you leave here and don't have a takeaway and don't go back to your area and change something about yourself for the better, why did you go?"
I totally botched I know it but y'all get the gist. It doesn't just go for big meetings either, but meetings like sacrament meeting too. I would like to encourage you all go to every church meeting that is supposed to be spiritual in nature and get one thing that you are going to improve on from it, and to act on it. I know that I will be doing that and I thought that I might invite y'all as well.
Anyway, I am loving the area! It is beautiful and the people are great! Tons of diversity! I don't know what else to say about it. But I am constantly thinking of y'all and hope that all is well! I love and look forward to y'all's emails every week! Keep them coming! And thanks for the package! We both are loving the popcorn and cookies! I need to find a cheep pair of gloves here pretty quick, its starting to get cold! Wool socks too. Heber said that AZ is still beautiful so I am a bit jealous!! lol. We are losing our car next week so please pray for us while it is in the shop. It isn't safe to bike around here so we will probably be on foot. Virginia needs more sidewalks! Like 200% more. So just prayers that we will still be able to work and have success would be much appreciated.
With all of the love in the world,
Elder Noah Ciminski
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| The view of a naval shipyard from Bishop's house. |
A quick story.
So we were raking leaves for an older guy (who is an Investigator and his even older mother) during exchanges and 2 things happened.
So he was playing the radio real loud for a while and we were listening to "worldly music" (like Meghan Trainor and Ariana Grande) my companion got the idea to give him the Book of Mormon on CD that he had in the car for him to play, and he played it! So instead of Adele blaring on the street it was Nephi! Pretty cool!
And you are probably wondering about the squirrel. The mother (who just loves watching the squirrels "chase each other and play" in their big tree) found this big guy on the side of the road in the gutter. It was my job to pick him up (with a shovel - don't worry mom :) ) and put him in the leaf pile to be picked up. It was just kinda cool because he totally could have been sleeping.