A relaxing week-kinda

According to bing the translation from this facebook caption. "In the game of the night home"

Yeah so I really can't remember that well what happened this last week since its now Tuesday. I didn't email yesterday because the library was closed. 
 We did the normal missionary things haha. Wow I'm having a really hard time remembering what we did this week. The days all blur into one day. Time is going by really crazy fast. The transfer is already over. Elder Steele and I are staying together. This is the first time I have not gotten a new companion. It is such a relief to finally not have a transfer! We have a ton of work going on here so that is nice as well. Nothing changes we can keep moving on what we were doing.

 Sister F, from the F family that I got really close to when I was in Chamblee Branch the first time had a baby girl this week (this is child number 8) they now have 3 girls and 5 boys. They never found out what it was going to be so she was thrilled it was a little girl. We stopped by to see her in the hospital and then on Sunday I got the chance to go with our branch president and Elder Thomas who is currently covering that area to visit the whole family. Oh it was so nice to see them. They are one of the only families that can say my last name haha. The kids came running greeting me, they are wild but so fun. 



 Nothing super crazy happened this week, that is always a good thing!! A normal week is hard to come by here. In fact in the "norm" is something crazy happening so when its relaxed and chilled that is a present! 

We have been getting some good referrals lately, one of them was a member who is the only member in her family. We stopped by left a note because no one was home. She called as soon as she got it. She said I live with my two aunts who are not members and there are kids that are 9 and older who are not baptized we are excited for you to teach us. They said they were coming to church but never came. Hopefully we can get over there this week and teach them.
 I'm not sure if I have mentioned the other one before, but she was baptized when she was 14 and soon after came to the us and has not been to church since. She really wants to get back and for her kids to learn. On top of this we have lots of other things going on and literally have not enough time to get them all done and the times people would like. Its a problem I wish I had my whole mission haha. 
 
 The last few weeks here have been really good, but really challenging keeping up with every thing and some struggles that have come up with some investigators and the other Elders serving in that branch have made it hard to get the things done that I would like to. I'm looking forward to the change that this transfer brings into the Branch and hope it is all for the good. The Branch is getting stronger but sure needs a lot of help. Some days all the problems pile up at once, but I never have been happier! Things really are going well. The days may drag on at times but the weeks pass with no warning. Its fantastic.

Hope you all are ready for summer. The heat sure as kicked in here thats for sure. High 90's with high high humidity. I'm cooking crispy out here!!

Love you all

Tanner

Cartersville flashback

         This was a pretty good week!! Still super busy and that's fantastic!

I had plans to go up to Cartersville on Saturday for Destinys baptism but my ride cancelled, i found another one and it cancelled and so for awhile i frantically searching for another ride, since i would be in the water I didn't wanna miss it at all. I love those kids and I taught her the lessons so she could be baptized. Well both rides that cancelled suddenly un -cancelled and C my good buddy from cartersville came all the way down and got us so we could go up!  The service was great, it was nice seeing all those folks from C'ville. J C a good friend from there came and picked us up and took us to his house after the baptism. He just got his patriarchal blessing and is really close to finishing his mission papers, the last thing I did before I left cartersville was called the patriarch and hand him the phone to schedule the appointment (he was really scared about it for some reason) well he is really excited now. His mom is not a member, but pays her tithing every week and testifies of the power of tithing, but wont get baptized. she never misses a sunday. I think was J gets him call things will change, she does not really want him to go. 

This was a pretty good week!! Still super busy and that's fantastic!

 Monday for P-day we went to breakfast with some members at Ihop and then we went out did all of our errands and then I got a nap and that nap was so fantastic I have not had a nap in such a long time. It really was like the highlight of that day!! 
Then after my glorious nap we had a Noche de hogar with the Familia M like we do every Monday night. We had M one of our investigators over there. She is learning pretty well and if she has a questions she asks it. Its great!

Tuesday I went on exchanges with Elder Fruean a Samoan Elder. He was my zone leader in Cartersville and we got to know each other pretty well up there. He is zone leader down here now and we had a good exchange. The only problem is he does not speak any Spanish, I mean yes I'm training, and a greenie can't say that much, but Elder Steele does a great job and he can help out in a lesson. So for the whole day it was me doing all the teaching by myself. We had a lesson with M. She has been reading in the Book of Mormon and has a lot of questions. Its different teaching her, you need to teach her differently than most people. Its cool though I have been learning a lot from it. It shows how necessary the Spirit is in teaching. The lesson went well and she said she has really been liking church and everything she is learning.

wednesday we got a refferal from some English Elders down in Lithonia, which is the bottom of our area (our area is HUGE) we went there to teach her and turns out her son is a member in Mexico. This was one of the most powerful first lessons I have been apart of. We taught the entire restoration and she ate it up. I asked if she had any questions a few times and each time she said no that it all sounded great. Then she told us an incredible experience she had. She witnessed a miracle with her son that is in mexico (the member) he was going to die, he was in the hospital dying, she tried every single religion she could find and no one could help. So she prayed on her own and asked God to save her son. He did. And now her son is a very strong member that goes to the temple in mexico. We committed her to baptism right then in that lesson. She said that she is ready and willing to accept all that we have to teach and ready and willing to do her part. That she feels the truth here and has participated in so many other religions and didn't find what she was looking for. The Spirit was very strong and I am excited to teach her again this week.

Thursday we had dinner with a part member family we have been working with. Her boyfriend is a member and she is not. She has investigated for awhile and knows a ton about the church. So I decided we needed to go to the source We taught her about how the Spirit works and how you can recognize an answer. We committed her to baptism and she said yes, and said this week she will tell us what day she is going to work for to get baptized. We need to get them married as well (3 families we are getting married and baptized, lots of work)

Friday was Z birthday, they threw a huge party at the church. It was a good time!! Good food, good cake, it was great. 



Sunday was busy and while we were at Z for dinner we got a call from L telling us to get to the house of the lady they gave us to teach. We went down there really fast and met liek 10 of their friends and set a couple things up for this comign weekend! This week has been busy and crazy and i love it!!

I hope you all are doing well, I'm almsot out of time so I gotta go but i love you all
Love Tanner

Mother's Day Weekend

Well happy mothers day again!!

It was so great talking with all of you! Sounds like things are going well there!! Besides the fact uncle Donald got shot, Uncle Greg got his finger bit off... i'm scared to see what happens to dad?? I guess i'm not the only accident proned one huh??? haha

well i jsut talked with you so i'm not sure what to say really hahahaha.

we had a really fun time at the activity on saturday. The men set the gym really nice and cooked everything and the youngmen served the women at their tables. They had music and dancing it was a lot of fun to see them having fun. We had a lot of investigators and less actives come it was a great turn out!!

We had dinner at a part members house from Puerto Rico after we got done talking, wow it was good. she cook ham with pineapple and cherries, pork thigh, rice, and salads. It was so good i ate way to much! (against my will, haha they give you so much food its not funny)

The went went really good. We had a meeting down in peach tree for the trainers again and it was pretty neat. we learned how to use some cool things on mormon.org and we had some good trainings on how to teach and study better. I enjoyed it! President S is going home at the end of this transfer so its going to be interesting to see the changes that will be coming!!!... I enjoy change so it wont phase me, i'm just excited for what ever comes (unless he is a natzi then i retract my liking change statement) 

Love you all hope everything is going great.... have fun up there 

Love Tanner

We got to Skype with Tanner on Mother's Day!!

96 degrees?? are you kidding me??‏

So this week as been aggravating only by the fact that it has been 96 degress, so that on top of humidity I have not dried off for the past week.

View from Stone Mountain

Stone Mountain

We started off the week by going to Stone Mountain park. I have been there before but its always fun to go and hiek up the giant granit rock, thats what it is, its not a mountain its a granit zit on the earth! We went as a district and had a blast despite the 96 degress in the middle of the day. We were in a little gift shop and i started talking to a couple Spanish people, they were from Cuba and were visiting from Texas, we talked for a while about what we do as missionaries and he said he had seen a lot of missionaries in texas and now because of me he would pay more attention to them. Its really cool how god puts us in places even if we make just a tiny difference. And I got to practice my Spanish, Cubans are probably the hardest to understand, and I understood them, so that was cool huh?

J is out of town for 3 weeks, he is working in Kentucky, so we will have to move the baptism back a little bit so they can get married when he comes back. We still taught E this week and she came to church so that was good.

We had a super good lesson with a lady named M we have taught her a couple times and she is really hard to teach, but the last two times we taught her she understood really well and didn't go way out there with her comments. Yesterday we went by with N and she had sent us a text the night before that we never got, but she showed it to us and she said that she couldnt make it to church this week but promised she would be there next week (she sent the text at 2 am) and said that she ws up thinking about our message and was deciding what she needed to do about it. I asked her if she believed it was true and if Joseph Smith is a prophet. She said that she now knew she needed to read the Book of Mormon in order to find out and that the names are hard for her to understand like moroni and nefi and lehi but that she would work past that and she really wants to know.  She commited to reading the book of mormon and praying and coming to the branch activity saturday and church on sunday, N told her that she would be there to pick her up so just be ready, and that she didnt need to worry about asking for  ride cause she just offered, N is super awesome and probably the best team up we could ever have. she served a mission when she lived in mexico so really knows what she is doing on top of her being one of the coolest people ever everyone loves her so it works out great!

Elder Gonzalez from the Presidency of the 70 came to our branch yesterday with his wife. He ended the meeting with his testimony and then said the 3rd hour he would do a Q and A. The Members were able to ask a ton of questions on how to improve the branch and build the branch stronger. He answered all the questions and then taught the doctrine behind each answer. It really helped the branch out. I think it gave them a little push that they needed. We have been working on a branch mission plan and focus families with the branch council and I think this was just what they needed to get that extra desire.

Things are going great here. we are super busy and its nice. We are literally so busy especially in the evening that members are calling or stopping us in church complaining that we have not been by or have not had dinner. sorry but two dinner appiontments a night is more than I want, and they are asking me to have 3.... no way!!! haha. At least the members like us. They will just have to take turns hahahaha

Brenen good job and scoring goals, keep working hard and listen to mom all of you kids.

Love you all Love Tanner