Snow Storm!

 (Elder Slade)

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

It's been a great week! It's been snowing for an entire week straight! It's been in the negatives as well. Pretty epic! I've been loving it, my companion Elder Auelua, from Hawaii, not as much. 🤣 The snow have made the roads pretty atrocious and I have been all together too tempted to drift everywhere. Don't fear, I have restrained myself. Mostly. 😉

The Lord has still been blessing us with many miracles. We started teaching a couple from China this week who have a lot of questions. We also started teaching a new couple named Victoria and Samuel. They are amazing! It's been amazing despite the business of the season how God has still been blessing us.

This next few weeks just got a lot busier though. Due to an emergency transfer, there will be two areas in Shelley combined. So for the next few weeks we will be covering 2 areas. It'll be exciting! I'm looking forward to this new year though. It'll be a time of change, and hope, and happiness, if we make it that way. I'd invite you to think what you can do to make that happen. For me, I will continue to build my foundation on Christ. He has brought me so much happiness in my life!

Love ya!

1-4. A few pictures from another snow cave we made today as a zone!

3. Zone activity playing a game called Secret Hitler!

S11 E6: Going back to my roots

 (Elder Cummings)

I got some transfer news this week that I'll be getting transferred to Metairie, Louisiana on Wednesday. That means I will have been in 6 different areas the last 6 transfers of my mission. All I know is that I am either part of the problem or the solution.

The cool thing is that I'll be 10 minutes from New Orleans, where I started my mission. I left New Orleans almost a years ago, so i guess it's about time I go back.

I could've sworn I sent an email titled "A Cajun Christmas" but I don't know what happened to it. Either way. I had a great Christmas and I hope yall did too.

Anyway story time:

Elder Weatherston and I hurry out of church to get to a lesson with our man James. Elder W and I met him the first couple days we were in Oak Grove and hadn't had much success with getting in contact with him. We knew he didn't didn't on Sundays and that the football games started at noon so we has to hurry. 

We knock on his door 3x, call him, go to his side door and knock and we get nothing. We see his truck in the driveway and start walking away when he opens the door and gladly let's us in. 

We sit down and one of the first things he says is "My Christmas was terrible. On Christmas day my auntie passed away and my nephew was found dead in his apartment". We just sit there and listen to him to a while and then share our testimony of the Atonement and Resurrection of our Savior and His Wonderful Plan of Salvation. Afterwards he just sits there and is like "I wasn't gonna let y'all in at first, but I'm glad that I did". We had a wonderful oppurtunity to point out that he was feeling the Holy Spirit and what he was learning was of God. He's a stud. Pray for him.

Have a blessed one

Elder Cummings 

 (Sister Putnam)

Feliz Navidad, everyone!!

Wow, so a year ago I never would have thought that my second Christmas in the field I would be serving in a Spanish Branch. But looking at my track record for the last 7 years.... *looks back on moving to Saudi Arabia for 5 years, then my first year of college which was switched to online cause of Covid for the last part, my online MTC experience, and the first 6 months of my mission which were mostly in quarantine* I have absolutely no reason to expect my life to actually stay on the logically expected course, and that includes my mission 😂

This week people mostly ghosted us or cancelled for lessons so that's great...we will be knocking their doors to see what's up this week.

Aside from that we got to attend Zone Conference which was awesome, we had a full day conference center to celebrate Christmas together as two zones and that was super fun! Hermana Shupe did a lovely Christmas rendition of Hallelujah that she posted on her profile, you should definitely check it out! 😉😉All the Spanish missionaries sang silent night in Spanish and all the Sisters sang the Nativity Song from the children's songbook and we all had a good Christmas dinner together.

Today we had a pday and celebrated Christmas and called the fam, we had a christmas dinner at around noon and will go to another one at 6, its all super fun 😀

I love you all!!

Hermana Alyssa Putnam

Merry Christmas!

 (Elder Slade)

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

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you had a fantastic holiday! This week was an awesome week. We spent Christmas and Christmas Eve visiting families and caroling to them. We got some people to make 60 plates of cookies for us to deliver as we carol! It was amazing!

We had some amazing Miracles this week! While we were caroling to one family with some other missionaries, they let us in and we shared a Christmas message with them. After the message, the mom said that she wanted to work towards baptism! The other Elders are now working with them. Another miracle we came as we visited a recent convert family, and they had invited one of their friends. We started teaching her as well, and she now wants to work towards baptism as well!

These were some real Tender Mercies the Lord had given us. None of which surpass the feeling of joy and peace I felt as I realized that I was able to serve my Savior Jesus Christ, during the season where we think about him the most! I truly want to give my entire life to Him! That's my gift for him, in response to all that he has done for me.

Love you all! I wish you a happy new year!

1. Some Christmas pajamas some members made for us! People are so kind here! It's overwhelming.

2-4. We made an igloo today with all of the snow we got! It was SO fun! We made a fire as well, and it gets pretty toasty in there. I'll send some more pictures next week!

S11 E4: Chunky River

 (Elder Cummings)

Howdy y'all!

This week was all over the place I don't know what actually to talk about. I spent the weekend up in Meridian, Mississippi with my boy Elder Smith. We taught some crazy lessons, including putting an sweet ol lady on date!

We had a Trizone Christmas Conference and that was tons of fun seeing a lot of other missionaries I served around.

Thank y'all for your prayers for Katie, Lisa, and Chris, there have been some miracles.

We had an awesome Restoration lesson with Katie and the Ginn family and she was able to make it to church this week!

We did a church tour with our boy Chris and he ate it all up. The Spirit was so strong you could cut it with a knife as we testified of the sweet blessing of baptism by Christ's authority. He was like "I don't know what to say, I want to be baptized though". It was wonderful

Please continue to keep them in your prayers! Love yall and Merry Christmas!!

Elder Cummings

Some photos:

1. Some Dawgs

2. Only in Mississippi is LSU trash

3. Reuniting of the Covington boys selfies

4. Our boy Chris

A Christmas Miracle!

 (Elder Slade)

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

It's been an awesome crazy week! Transfers happened Thursday, but two days before that, I got super sick, throwing up quite a bit. It was one of the most inconvenient times to get sick, right before transfers. My wonderful companions offered me a priesthood blessing though, and that afternoon I started feeling way better and the day after I was completely fine! It was a Christmas Miracle! 🎅🌌 It was a testimony to me, that God is very aware of us. If we turn to him, he will bless us!

The rest of the week has been great! I moved to my new area with my companion, Elder Auelua from Hawaii. It's been pretty great!  We've been walking a lot in the snow, and it's been so fun! We are looking forward to this week with Christmas. Christmas as a missionary is the best! 🎅🎉

Merry Christmas to you all! I love you all and hope you have a fantastic week!

1-3. Different pictures together. We were in a trio for a little bit with Elder Stichart (he's a beast!) He is no longer with us, but it was awesome having him!

S11 E3: Deerburgers

 (Elder Cummings)

Hey y'all!

This one's gonna be pretty short. Afterall, I emailed just a couple days ago. We have had some fire lessons and the people we are teaching are progressing in a miraculous way. The ward is amazing and loves to work with us. Life is G O O D.

Our friend Lisa is on date for baptism!! We got a hold of her 2 weeks ago, she lives in the boonies so we have never been able to meet with her in person. But she joins sacrament via zoom and reads the Book of Mormon every day. We're just on the phone and she told she believes it's all true and wants to be a part of His Church. Miracles.

Our boy Chris. Chris is a legend. We met him last week, had some awesome lessons with a young man in our ward. He came to church, and said that he wants to be baptized just like that! There's a couple obstacles in the road for that but i have never met someone have so much desire to be close to God. Please please please be praying for Lisa, Chris, and Katie

Lastly, we got some ground deer meat from someone we're teaching. Unfortunately it is not the same deer from the picture last week but it was just as good. We made us some deer patty melts. Whataburger style. Very very good.

Again. Please pray for Lisa, Chris, and Katie. We need y'alls faith and prayers! All of them have very unique and hard situations, but any worthy desire they have can come about.

One last time. Pray for our people: Lisa, Chris, and Katie. They need it.

Love y'all have a blessed one

Elder Cummings