Winnemucca Week 14 (Mission Week 35)

 Hey everyone!! Another week has passed. This past week was pretty good. Gary's baptismal date was confirmed for this Saturday! It's at 2pm. We are so excited and happy for Gary. Also Joey (a youth I was teaching in my last area) was baptized and I watched it on Zoom because Winnemucca is too far away from Washoe Valley to attend the service in person. Anyways here is the weekly recap.

Monday

As always Regular pday things. Not much to do here in Winnemucca so pdays are always the same.

Tuesday

We had district council and then after all the Elders went to help move someone. We had service for the Jones family. We also had a lesson with Gary!

Wednesday

I went on exchanges with Elder Anderson. This exchange was really cool because we gave 3 Priesthood blessings! One of them was as we were walking a lady saw us outside and asked us if we could give her daughter a blessing. We went inside and did it and it turns out that the lady was baptized a long time ago but has been inactive forever. Her daughter was really stressed out so she asked us to give her a blessing. So cool! It's also a testament as to how you always need to keep yourself worthy to give a blessing at a moments notice. We had a lesson with Stacy and Tracy and then we went to mutual to practice our skit with the youth for the Christmas party.

Thursday

We drove down to Reno for my doctors appointment because of my potential TIA. It was actually kinda nice to have a break from the normal routine and take a day to go to Reno. The appointment lasted a while and all the did was refer me to a neurologist (which was the point of me going). We ate lunch with another set of elders which was really fun. We made the 2 and a half hour drive back and right when we got to Winnemucca a snowstorm hit. It's a good thing we weren't driving to Elko because it was pretty dangerous. We finished off the night with basketball. 

Friday

We had another lesson with Gary which went very well. The rest of the day was spent in deep Grass Valley contacting people and inviting them to the Christmas party. Our truck is very dirty because of it haha

Saturday

We went to one of our youths middle school basketball game which was fun. After that we had another lesson with Gary to prepare him for his baptismal interview that happened later that day. I watched Joey's Baptism which was a highlight for my mission. In his testimony he said that Elder Rhoades and I were the first missionaries that weren't wierd and he connected with and he pretty much attributed him getting baptized to the Thursday night basketball that I made big during the summer. It felt very nice to see the fruit of my labors. Gary's baptismal interview was after and he passed!! Elder Burton and I are so excited. The Christmas party was Saturday night and it was very fun. We performed our skit with the youth and other Elders which was a success. The kids were laughing so much and the next day at church people were telling us that we had the most entertaining show they have ever seen hahaha. There is a video somewhere out there that I'll get lol

Sunday

We went to church and watched the Christmas devotional in the evening. We watched it at our Bishops house which was nice.

Lesson Reviews

Gary

We had a total of 3 lessons with Gary this week. All went very well. We taught him the commandments and the laws and Ordinances of the gospel. We also did a review of all the lessons and did a mock interview with him. My favorite part of all the lessons was definitely talking about temples. Brother Betteridge was in attendance and we all talked about the blessings of a temple marriage and temple work. The was filled with the Spirit. Another cool thing was that as we were filling out the baptismal form Gary couldn't remember when his parents were born so I tried to look them up on FamilySearch. After a few minutes of searching I found them!!! It was so cool. I can't wait for Gary to do family history and go to the temple and do their work.

That's about it for this week. I decorated our apartment for Christmas so I'm really happy because of that. I organized a Secret Santa for the Zone and everyone is participating. We are going to put all the gifts under our tree! I know the mission is different than being at home but I'm trying to make this Christmas as fun as possible for everyone as we are away. Biggest thing this week is that Gary is being baptized so be thinking of us at 2pm on Saturday!

I love yall! Have a great week!!

Elder Proctor

Pics of Joey's Baptism (unfortunately I am not in them haha). Peter was the one that baptized him which was so cool to see. Peter is another youth I connected with and his family is what made Joey interested in what made his house so special. It's because of the Gospel in the home which made the Anderson home so pleasant. I love Peter and Joey so much!!