Christmastime is the best!

 (Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person could hope for!

Another great week! The first week of December has brought the excitement of Christmas and I am so excited! Christmas music has been playing, Christmas lights are up and spirits are high! Christmas time as a missionary is literally the best because everything fits with your purpose: service, love, the focus on Christ. It's awesome!! 🎅🎁😄

We have been using SO many miracles across the mission. The Lord has really blessed us. We have 100 less missionaries than we did last year, but we are seeing more success than we were then. It's nothing we are doing, it's all the Lord and the wonderful members working here. It's fitting to be a miracle filled Christmas.

This week we committed our friend Ezra to be baptized. He is praying about it this week, so please keep that in your prayers that he may have that desire. We love him so much, and have really seen him grow these past several weeks we've been teaching him.

Pictures"

1-2. We set some Christmas lights up for Christmas. They spell out 500! That is our goal for baptisms as a mission for this year and we are SO close! One or the pictures I'm with Elder Carillo, one I'm with Elder Quigley.

3. Saying goodbye to Elder Bird.

4. Elder Clark and I in Rigby.

5. Beautiful Sunset one evening.

S11 E1: Chum and Spoon take Mississippi (continued...)

 (Elder Cummings)

Howdy y'all!

Elder Weatherston and I officially made it to the greater Hattiesburg area Wednesday night. We had some great Thanksgiving feasts and got to work. This area has been kind of dead when it comes to missionary work so we're hoping get things rolling soon enough.

Quick highlight from the week:

We were making some calls to people in our records and set up a lesson with a nice lady named Patrice. She pulls up to the church building and is just all about Jesus it is so awesome. We get talking and turns out that she was baptized 22 years ago in this miraculous literally life saving event with the missionaries. We have a good long talk about her story and we talk about the temple and show her a picture of the rededicated Baton Rouge temple and she starts crying and telling us how she has always wanted to make it there. It was a very real and cool experience and Patrice is a legend. Enough said.

Anyway, I had a great week, a lot of work, a lot of help from the Lord.

Have a blessed week y'all

Elder Cummings

Thanksgiving!

 (Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person could hope for!

Let me tell you, being a missionary in Idaho on Thanksgiving is the way to go! We had like 3 dinners! I felt so bloated that evening! I promised I was only going to grab a little bit of food at each place, but then when I got there, it just looked too good, so I filled my plate. It was pretty great.

Miracles happened this weeks, of which I wont be able to mention all. But it is amazing to me about how when we are thankful, and truly recognize that all things that we have and are, are from God, then He blesses us even more. I've been so blessed my life, more than I deserve. God is good! He loves us and cares about us!

And now, it's officially Christmas time! The second Thanksgiving dinner ended, we were all about Christmas! 🎅 I am SO excited!!! As we jump into this Christmas season, ponder on what you can do to make this season special. What can you do to serve you family and friends and make it the most meaningful time of your life?

I love you all! I'm grateful for you. Hope you're doing well!

1. Elder Beal and I! His first and middle name are Auto and Mo.

2. Elder Strong and I! 💪He's pretty swol!

3.Elder Brown and I!

4. A snow man we made! He's a missionary snowman!

5. Elder Tasker and I! Funny story: in the middle of the afternoon he strd feeling sick, so we went to the church building, and while we were walking in, he just blacked out and collapsed! I thought he was a goner! He ended up recovering and working the entire night. What a beast!

Thanksgiving!

 (Sister Putnam)

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!

This past week and a half has been crazy!!

After going to the gym on Tuesday, we accidentally left the gym without our keys, locking ourselves out of both the gym and our apartment.  I  hopped the fence to the pool area, where there was a door to the gym and discovered it was locked.  We finally had go enlist someone's help from outside. This guy let us in and we got our keys and thanked him and he said, "If you hadn't gone to the gym, this wouldn't have happened. Moral of the story: Don't work out." Thank you, random citizen!

We also met with Emily and taught her a part of hte plan of salvation.  Then we went and met with Ben and Kathie and taught Ben about the Restoration and invited him to church. Kathie asked us about when we decided to follow God and our personal conversion stories, so the 3 of us shared our experiences.

On Wednesday we had a service project that lasted the better part of the day, and this lady had ducks and chickens and I caught a duck. He was quacking so angrily when I caught him lol.  We also went to Katy and Addy's house and taught about the gospel of Jesus Christ.  During the middle of it, I felt impressed to ask a particular question to Katy instead of do what we originally planned, and - without going into too much detail - we ended up learning a lot more than we would have otherwise, and have more insight as to how to help them both! Follow the small spiritual impressions yall, they aren't really so small!

On Friday and Saturday we went to the Stake Musical to be ushers and we also got to see how talented everyone in our stake was.  It was awesome! Lol Saturday night we had district council and night district council everyone is tired and so funny things are like 10 times as funnyb

On Sunday Ben came to church, and so did Sara and she brought her boyfriend, Ace! Sara is a neighbor girl that Sister Hatton and I started talking to in the parking lot of our complex one day. Sister Rice and I got ice cream with her and we invited her to the primary program last week but she was out of town but wanted to come this week. She said she and Ace loved it and that they want to come again!! We had a departing dinner for Sister Caldwell with President and Sister Auna, and the Senior couples and then we had a lesson with Sister Johnson's friend Nick!

Monday morning Sister Caldwell was picked up by President and Sister Auna to go to the airport. We miss her ;)

Tuesday night we got pizza and went to Sara's apartment to do a paint and pizza night and we talked a lot with her about so many things!!! She's so cool! She is super willing to share things about herself and so we asked her about what she believes about where we go when we die.   We were amazed to find out that she believes nearly the same thing taught in the plan of salvation! She was excited to find that out too! We love Sara and are planning on doing a nails night next time we meet with her!!

Yesterday we had district council and a service project with Opa and a Burn the Bird Zumba workout to compensate for how much we are gonna eat today so that was fun.

Love you all!!

Sister Alyssa Putnam

Light the world!

 (Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person could hope for!

There were SO many miracles this week! Ezra came to church for this first time this week, and he loved it! He said he loved singing and wants to come again this next week! Tracy came to Church as well, and she loved it! What was great about them coming to church was that it all was all because of the members. They helped invite them, and sat by them and just loved them! Pretty amazing! Another miracle happened later that day. After a series of promptings, we found ourselves driving down the road and pulled a uturn to talk to this guy on his lunch braless outside a restaurant. We parked and started talking to him. His name was Austen and bore testimony of God's love and set up another time to teach him! It was a pretty cool miracle!

It was also zone conference week! Part of zone conference introduced the new Christmas Light The World initiative the church is doing. Jesus Christ is the light of the world! Let's try to light the world by doing what He did! Here's the link if you want to check it out! https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist

Love you all! Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving! 🦃

Pictures:

1. We brought Elder Dodge to the airport 5o go to Argentina.

2. Did some doordash with a Book of Mormon for a member who wanted it.

3. We went to a massage chair place that was amazing! Here's our sad face before hand.

S10 E6: Chum and Spoon take on Mississippi

 (Elder Cummings)

We have got the transfer news…

Elder Weatherston and I will both be leaving Covington and headed to Oak Grove, Mississippi where we'll finish his training! Honestly, I'm really excited. Besides for exchanges I've never served in Mississippi the first 16 months of my mission, kind of crazy. Ive also never got transferred WITH my companion so that's so much fun. I'm so grateful to be with him for another transfer though, he's a legend, let me paint this picture…

He's a 160 lbs, 6' 5" ginger guy from Nampa Idaho that is going into fashion when he gets home to start his own clothing line. He got hit by a truck like one year ago and almost died and loves jazz music. Everyone just ends up calling him Weatherspoon so we lovingly called him Spoon now. He's basically the most interesting guy in the world

This week was so awesome though. We had a chance to visit New Orleans one day and it brought me way back to the beginning of my mission. It was really exciting though. We hit up some Cafe Du Monde, ate some beignets on the Mississippi River just like ol times, and then visited the Cathedral on Jackson Square. It's the oldest Cathedral in the United States that is still used. See pics for more, it's so pretty. Then we hit up the Superdome and Smoothie King Center where the Saints and Pelicans play.

On Sunday we had a baptism for Miss Evelyn Lott! She had mostly been taught by the other Elders but is an absolute legend. She's a sweet old black lady born and raised in Covington and is just the most fiery but loving person ever. Willor Bedford, another sweet old black lady that I mentioned last week planning to be baptized in December was able to make it to Evelyn's baptism and she was just on top of the world. Turns out they know each other and Willor was like "I gotta go give her a hug im so proud of her" and then they sat and talked for like 10 minutes while Evelyn taught Willor about how she is going to get baptized and the importance of it. As we walked out with Willor, she was just full of joy. She usually has trouble walking and was just like "Man, my legs are working great today! Thank you Lord! I feel so light and happy and welcome! Thank you God! I've never felt like this way before! Come here boys and help walk me to the car!" She's so so so so so awesome, I'm so sad that I will be gone for her baptism next month but alas the Lord has different plans.

Have a blessed one,

Elder Cummings

One year

 (Sister Putnam)

Hey, everyone!

Wow, a lot happened this week! There is a member in our ward whose daughter has chosen to not be baptized yet. So, we went over to her house to see what we can do to help her want to be baptized. She seems lonely and like she needs to spend enough time around the missionaries to realize that we aren't trying to force her into anything and that we really do care. Sister Johnson connected really well with Addy, and that was cool to see!

On Thursday we went over to visit with Anna so she could meet Sister Caldwell and Sister Johnson.  It was awesome to see how well Sister Johnson connected with Anna too! It's cool to see how changes like transfers are inspired!!

On Saturday we met with Emily at a donut place because it was wet and cold.  We tried to teach her about the atonement but it was a noisy environment so it was a learning experience! We'll try somewhere else next time!

We also went and dropped flowers off at Amy's house and sent her a text to let her know.  She responded saying she's been super busy and sick and that she hasn't stopped thinking about us and coming to church.  She mentioned her birthday was coming up on Sunda,y so we stopped by on Sunday and sang her happy birthday and let her know we don't ever forget her. Then we heart attacked her door.

Also, I've been a missionary for a whole year now, as of Thursday!!! As I look back on the last year I realize how much I've changed and grown and how many people I've met and had the opportunity to impact and learn from. It's made me realize how much potential there is in a year, in every minute of day and every month of each year, and how much power we have to make a difference in others lives!

I love you all!!

Sister Alyssa Putnam