Also, Santa came on Saturday! Bonus Christmas!
Besides that, the only thing that really happened this week was V. But that has been incredible. We have met with him at least every day, and he is now 10 days free of alchohol, and has dropped his smoking significantly. It's insane how fast he is picking things up. A lot of times we'll start teaching something and he'll finish our sentences for us. We've also had great success bringing a lot of members to the programs with him and they have been awesome. Today was supposed to be an extra hard day from the alchohol withdrawels, the ward mission leader said he'd run over at 9 and check up on him, and then we'd come over again around noon to make sure he was doing good. We showed up at 12:30 and the two of them were still there talking. Also, it's super cool to see his personality coming out now that other things are affecting him less, he is actually super funny. He is really good with phones and technological stuff, the ward mission leader pulled out his phone during a program and he looked at it and said "who made that phone, I want to pray for them". He than proceeded to compare apple products to the perfectness of God. Also, he showed us a recording of him playing the organ at some place, he played out the first bit of Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (or whatever that hymn is called). He asked if we liked it and Elder Anderson says "that was awesome, I really like that song too". "What, I was improvising". I could go on for a while but lets just say this man in incredible. Such a testimony of the power of the atonement, when we first met with him and were talking about how he can become better I had trouble believing the words I was saying sometimes. We kept telling him he could do it but there was literally nothing we could do to help him. Good thing we have the Savior backing us up.
I really can't think of a lot besides that. We had a couple of other good programs. Got dogged a few times. In English class we tried to teach them about sarcasm. "Okay everyone, you basically lie to their face but it's okay." "Couldn't that be mean?" "We aren't encouraging it, we're just saying it happens." We have a really wierd culture back home.
Elder Beaumont (one of the other Elders here) came up with a great idea last week to get member missionary work going. We're going to try and visit all of the members and share with them a 10 step program we set up for them to share the gospel with their friends, and then follow up with them on it and get that going. The idea is still pretty new, but I think it could do a lot of good. Although Elder Beaumont just got transfered out so that's a bummer.
We'll, I'm excited for this next transfer, stay tooned for next week!
Love
Parkinson Elder
