Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

 Merry Christmas Everyone! Hopefully Christmas made up for everything that happened this year because I know it sure did for us. There's just something about the month of December that brings a ton of joy, happiness, and unity into all of our lives. Not a whole lot happened this week due to Christmas, but there still were some highlights;

Our friend Alice was finally able to make to church in person! It's pretty funny because although we have been teaching her for like a month now, we had never met her in person until Sunday. It was super awesome to see her there and she was super happy to be there. Her testimony is getting stronger everyday and she really wants to be baptized, so hopefully next Tuesday that will be able to happen.

We had a pretty cool call with a member this week. She texted us and asked if we would be able to help her become a better missionary and of course we said she found the right people to help. We did a zoom call and were able to help her learn how to share what she believes in a nice simple conversation way so her friend can feel comfortable and not like she is sitting in a lecture. We were able to do a little practice teaching with her which allowed her to see what we were talking about in action. All the members here are super solid and have a desire to share the gospel.

Fun fact: I successfully made a turkey for the first time haha. It was a whopping 17lbs and tasted delicious. I admit it was a tiny bit on the dry side, but hey it'll still make your mouth water. 

Well that's it for the week, finish 2020 off strong! Try to not stop smiling until the first of this year. It may sound challenging, but it's only 3 more days. Have a happy New Year!

Tangiringkami ni Kabane 

Elda Jeppson

Merry Christmas 

My first Turkey

Christmas dinner missionary style 

Elder Young, Me, Elder Groll

Having a Zoom call with our friend Delancey (aka our boardwalk singer friend)

Caroling Fun

 How's it going everyone? I hope your all enjoying the warm weather of California because it feels like the Artic over here haha. This week was one for the books for sure. So let's just jump right into it shall we:

Tuesday was a packed day! We had our zone conference about an hour and some minutes away. It sure was awesome being able to see the other people in our zone in person again. It's funny how different zone conferences here in the states are than back in Kiribati. Zone Conferences in Kiribati were basically mission conferences because the whole mission was there due to the smallness of the island. Here it's about 25 people but still super awesome. We of course snagged some photos because it's pretty hard to leave zone conference without some new pictures. We also got our Christmas packages which really made everyone happy. After it finished we drove straight home, ran into the house to throw on some warm clothes, then drove another 30 minutes to go caroling to a members sister. I forgot how fun caroling was, but I don't know how you Utah people do it when it feels like 0° outside haha. It definitely was exciting singing because the house is right off of main street so you got lots of people watching you. The lady loved it though and she said it made her year which brought joy to us.

On Wednesday we got some snow! Man that was exciting at least to me because I don't live in the snow unlike my companion who basically lives in snow year round in Idaho haha. We of course had a little snowball fight because what person can't throw a snow ball when it is snowing outside. Then it started raining during the night so all the snow melted. That was a bummer.

We were supposed to have a baptism on Saturday, but our friend got stuck up in New York because it snowed a ton up there. Hopefully, she can get back down here soon so we can have her baptism. 

The rest of the week was filled with teaching people and drinking hot chocolate;) We also made a new video so if you haven't watched it, you better be going on Facebook after this. 

That was basically the whole week! Make sure y'all are lighting the world during this last week and remember to smile!

Tangiringkami ni kabane 

Elda Jeppson 

Elder Groll and I 

It snowed!!!

Elder Johnson and I 

The alley way photoshoot

Classic selfie with the tree pic

Elder Groll, Young, Me, Shurtz, and Sorensen

Some Caroling fun, Sister missionaries, Us and some Members from our ward 

Me, Elder Jorgensen, Elder Young 

Our wonderful tree 

Wait...I Thought It Was December?

 Mauri mauri everyone! I hope you are all still doing well during this fine holiday season and hope that y'all are enjoying all of the treats /bread/letters/soap/you name it that is usually gifted during this time of the year haha. This week I honestly forgot that it was the middle of December but I will get to that in a second. For now let's jump into the rest of the week:

We have been having surprisingly good success with being able to teach old people that were taught a while ago. Everyone seems to answer there phones right away right now which is pretty sweet. I don't know if they answer it right away because they think it's the Amazon truck telling them that there package has arrived or because they truly want to talk to us, but either way we have been able to teach a couple of them which has been sweet. One of the people that answered was the biggest conspiracy theorist I have ever met. I mean he was saying some stuff that wasnt even making sense to me haha. We probably said about 5 words that whole call because he just non-stop talked. But the more he talked the more it sounded like he believed what our church is all about, so hopefully we can meet with him again.

We have been having a lot of fun with the Light The World. On Friday we made some cookies and delivered them to a couple people in the ward and then word got out that these were the best cookies that they have ever tasted, so on Saturday I whipped up another batch and we delivered some more to more members. It was awesome. 

Now here's why I forgot it was December. Besides the one day where it kind of snowed, it was super sunny and about 60 degrees. It was awesome! It felt like it was the end of spring, not the middle of winter. I will be very happy if the rest of the winter is like this. 

Here's some Spiritual Food:

There's a simple scripture that we have been sharing and its found in John 14: 27, it says, 

"Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid."

Hopefully, you all can focus on the simple words of this scripture and be able to recognize the love that God has for each of you.

Well that's sums up the week quite nicely. Remember to keep on smiling!

Tangiringkami ni kabane 

Elda Jeppson

Elder Jorgensen and I

Bowling with the District 

A massive Hershey bar 

I Used To Think I Enjoyed The Cold...Until Now

 Hello Everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful first week of December and have been able to join in on Light The World. If you haven't, now is a great time to start! I also hope you all are enjoying the warm weather out there on the west coast because it is freezing here haha. Who knew it could get so cold. Well let's jump into the week;

We had a super cool experience on Saturday. A member from Arizona called us saying he has a friend here in our area whose wife and kids are not members and that he wants us to teach them. The Husband was his seminary student about 18 years ago out in Utah. He got baptized when he was 18 and he only took seminary because he needed an extra class and his friend told him he could sleep through it all everyday. He is now 36 and has a wife and 2 young kids. He came back to church yesterday and has become fully active again which is awesome. He wants us to help him help his wife to join the church with his kids. This was definitely an awesome little miracle!

Our other friend is still on date to be baptized on the 19th of this month which is awesome. She has a strong desire to get baptized and is doing everything she can to meet that goal.

We had our interviews with our President on Thursday and we found out that all three of us are staying another transfer together. That means by the end of this transfer I will have spent 7 months in this area- pretty crazy huh? It will be pretty awesome though.

 I'm definitely not all that pumped about how cold it has been getting now. It gets down to about 20ish degrees at night but with the humidity it feels like zero and it gets around mid 30s in the day but feels like 10° haha. Luckily we are still inside pretty much all day so we don't have to be out in this weather. We actually got pretty locked down again, so no meeting in person with people unless it's at the church.

I hope you all were able to watch the Worldwide Christmas Devotional! If not, you should because it was awesome. The speakers were awesome and so was the music. It really focuses your thoughts on the Savior during this Christmas season.

That's the week folks. Remember to keep on smiling!

Tangiringkami ni kabane

Elda Jeppson

Some Awesome Sunsets! 

Sunday night Zone Zoom game night 

Our District 

A "Golden" Week

 Hello Hello Everyone, Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you all ate some quality food and some delicious pie because I know I did. But the real question is who won the Turkey Trot/Soccer Game/Football game/whatever other activity that is done on Thanksgiving morning?? Well this week was pretty cool so let's jump right into it;

We had the craziest experience last Monday night. We were driving home from getting some pizza when we get a call from some Sister missionaries up north that they have a referral for us. They gave us her number and we were about to call her, when she called us instead. She told us that she saw our last video on FaceBook (the one of us dancing with the Book of Mormon) and asked us if we were the "dancing missionaries" and told us she wanted to get baptized! We were so surprised when we heard this because 1: We have never had some call is from our videos, and 2: She told us she wants to be baptized haha. We asked her if she knew anything about baptism and she said she did. She went on to teaching us every single lesson there is haha. I mean how cool is that! This lady was teaching us the lessons! She told us when we were about to get off that she is what missionaries call a "Golden investigator" hah pretty sweet huh!?

We had a pretty tasty Thanksgiving dinner if I must say. Two awesome ladies in our ward made it for us because we weren't able to go to someone's house for dinner. But it was still a great day! We of course played a little soccer in the morning because you can't not play soccer or football when its Thanksgiving. 

I encourage you all to go a read President Oaks last general conference talk titled "Love Your Enemies" again. We discussed this talk with a lot of member this week and I realized how much we can learn from this amazing talk. 

Just a little weather report for the state of New Jersey: it has been in the 50° to 70° range for the past couple weeks now. Hopefully it stays that way because I've heard winters can be rough here. Right now the weather is treating us well. 

That's a wrap on the week! Keep on smiling!

Tangiringkami!

Elda Jeppson

Thanks Mom! 

Post Thanksgiving shenanigans 

Santa....Is that you??