I think winter came early... really early. This week was in the low 50's and high 40's, and it changed all over night. A really bad cold front came through and just caught us all off guard. We were pulling out jackets, sweaters, beanies and gloves, and just about everything else we could to stay warm. Sadly we were pushed out in the cold for most of the week. We had very few appointments so we walked and froze, took the bus then froze some more. Yes, I'm starting to complain about the winter that came early. I had fun in the sun!

Our week was alright; we visited some investigators and set up appointments for this new week. We tracted streets, and spent a lot of time trying to find all the less active members that we are starting to learn about. Our ward counsel is working on this really big project of reaching out to every less active person that we either don't really know anything about or we have lost contact with. The result is we now have updated information on the ward and where people live and other information about them. Then the missionaries and the members are to reach out to all of them and find out if they want further contact from the ward, or if they should be labeled a DNC - Do not contact. This is a great project for the missionaries because it gives us a lot of new people to meet and potentially work with. So far though we have only been used by the less active members as messengers saying that they want no further contact or they want their named removed. It’s a work in progress. We still have a large list of names and families that we still have not seen yet so there is hope for at least one person to agree to meet with us and start coming back to church. All we need to hope for is for one person to start reading the Book of Mormon.

My Appleton Homies - (L-R) Elder Cook (Utah), Elder Ochoa (Guatemala)
my beautiful self, Elder McMoore (New Zealand/Hawaii).

Appleton Homies just hangin' - (L-R) Me! Elder Ochoa, Elder McMoore, Elder Cook.

The Book of Mormon musical starts playing in Appleton tomorrow, this should be interesting.

Short story: on Friday we were at St Vincent for our weekly service project. One of the ladies who also volunteers there asked if all four of us elders were available Saturday to help her out with a project that she and her husband would need help with. She said that if we came and helped out that she would feed us dinner. We set up a time and exchanged numbers. Saturday came and after a Hmong party that we were invited too, we changed into service clothes and headed out to the woman's house... not knowing what we would be doing for service. When we got there we were amused to hear that the project was cleaning out the chicken pen and moving all the poop to another location for composting. It smelled nasty, and the goats were just as bad. It was thick too like a 7 layer dip that had been sitting there for a long time. They worked us hard though and we got most of the project completed. When dinner time came, we enjoyed some really excellent homemade burritos. We set up another appointment to help them with their next project (home demolition!!!), and we will begin to teach them about the Restoration and the Book of Mormon when we come back.

Scripture for the week: 2 Nephi 4:21

21 He hath filled me with his love, even unto the consuming of my flesh.

Have a fantastic week

Love,

Elder Luymes

Just messing with the settings on my new camera.
This one makes my lips look big.