Jan. 4, 2016 Happy New Years from Catawba, South Carolina

This last week we sure worked hard! It was a week of many meetings. The meetings were very inspiring, and I am so excited for where the mission is heading. There were like 2 training meetings, and when you add weekly planning and 12 week training for Elder P___ on top of that you end up with plenty of stuff to do and not much time to do it! It was a better week than the past few though, we weren't as "bugged" by the bed bugs, they have seemed to stay in our room and ever since we killed 14 in one day, the numbers of them have seemed to go down. We have only killed like 5 or 6 since. I keep telling Elder P___ that its really just survival of the fittest, and that we are only killing the dumb, slow bed bugs while all of the fast, smart, vicious ones are hiding as they combine their efforts to breed a massive bed bug army that will completely overwhelm and surprise us in our sleep, sucking us dry and leaving nothing but a fragile empty husk of us left. It's not a very pleasant image.. I hope the exterminators come soon...

So anyways, R___ is doing well. We are doing family history tonight with her, which is super exciting!

We had lots of other appointments set up for this week, but after loads of cancellations we spent most of our time finding. We were rewarded for our diligent efforts with 0 new investigators and the knowledge that we have loads more patience than we thought we did! We did meet one kinda eccentric guy named M___ M___ who told us he was looking for a church! We also had a lesson with our favorite Pastor R___ C___, and it was one of the most intense Restoration lessons ever!! We are like in the middle of the first principle, God is Our Loving Heavenly Father, and I mentioned we are his spirit children. Next thing you know, we are being asked what our thoughts are on the triumvecta (probably not spelled right), and why we believe God has a body. We were able to kinda answer (kinda), but told him we didn't really know and that we would study on it. 5 days of studying later and I still don't really know what the triumvecta even is (or why it is important) and the best I can come up with for God having a body is if Joseph Smith is a prophet, then we have to trust him and the translations/revelations he received (in other words, pray about it). So yeah, the rest of the lesson was pretty good, and more deep and funny and interactive and random and yet still powerful than any I have ever had. Elder P___ did a great job answering lots of the questions, and in the end Pastor C said he would read and pray about the Book of Mormon! That night a member showed us a neat video of a Baptist Preacher being interviewed about the Book of Mormon, and how he actually really likes it, and so we sent that to R___ and asked about how his church went. He said "Hey Elder, Church was awesome on SUNDAY. We had a great time! Thanks so much for asking. Looking forward to getting into my Nephi this week!!!" So yeah, he is lots of fun :)

For this next week, my ponderize scripture is Doctrine and Covenants 33:9-11 to help raise my faith that there are more people ready here to hear God's message, despite the tough weeks we have been having. I believe there are, and we are just doing our best to find where they are at.

I sure love all of you! Fight the fight, keep the faith! God IS your LOVING Heavenly Father!!! :)

Happy P-daay! 

Love, 

Elder Branch

So this was funny. We tried knocking on a trailer over behind this house, and no one answered. We thought we had seen someone inside but it was pretty quiet. We went over and took some pictures next to the house, and all of a sudden a man came out of the trailer. I guess he was freaked out that we were taking pictures of the place, but he turned out to be very nice. We shared the Restoration and he wasn't interested, but we were laughing afterwards that we had found the secret way to get to talk to people. If they don't answer, just start taking pictures and they will come! Haha, anyways, hope you have a great week!