December 12, 2016

Hello everyone, lots happened this week. First, there is this Baptist church in Santa Clara that turns their parking lot into a live nativity "Little Town of Bethlehem" with animals and towers and all this stuff. So we went over and helped them spread sand across their whole parking lot for service at the beginning of the week. It's a super cool set up. Then, I went to the Christmas Creche in Palo Alto 3 nights in a row. Once was with our recent convert, then the next two nights with 2 of our investigators. It was really awesome. And the Palo Alto church building has a pipe organ made by the same company as the conference center. They do concerts and things while the creche is going on, its really cool. I guess this guy in that ward tried out for the MOTAB organist and only got beat by the current one. So he was runner up and another elder and I talked with him for a little bit. Alex would have been better to converse with him about those things LOL.

So me and my companion Elder Cabral were planning on attending the temple Friday morning with a member who just got back from his mission, but then Friday night he got a leadership role and had to go to a meeting Friday morning with some other people in our zone. So we went on this crazy exchange and I still went with our Philipino Elder, Elder Villanueva. And the guy we went with was from the Philipines too haha. So I ended up going to the temple with them and I might get to go again next week with the people who couldnt attend again. So I'm hoping for that LOL. We got there and it was super foggy, but it was beautiful. The fog barely cleared as we were leaving and the view is absolutely amazing. You can see all of Oakland to San Fransico, and see the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate in the distance. It's amazing! It was a great oportunity to go and feel the spirit there too. 

On Saturday we met with David A Bednar and that was one of the greatest experiences I've ever had. There are about 180 in our mission and we all met in the chapel. 180 sounds big but we didn't even fill it. It was so personalized and the spirit was so strong. We had an open dicussion with him and it was amazing. We talked about faith a lot. Elder Cook is also really cool. Elder Bednar is so funny and is such a cool guy haha. It was 4 hours and didn't even feel like it. I wish we could have just sat there to talk with him all day. 

Anyways, my trainer is getting transferred to a different area and I get a new trainer tomorrow. So he will finish my training and I'll have to show him around the area. I guess that switching half way through training isnt very common. My companion that I've had has been really great and hopefully my new trainer is a good guy. I'll keep you posted, I look forward to the Christmas packages! Thank you to whoever sent me the Cubs shirt, it didnt say who it was from, but I love it. I also get my Ipad this week so I start using that. Love you guys