December 26, 2016

Family and Friends,

Merry day late Christmas and Happy 5 day early New Year! I hope everyone had a great time with family and friends yesterday and throughout this week! The holidays are the best, especially the ones where we can celebrate the Savior's birth and set goals for a brand new year to more fully reach our potential. Goals that are physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional are very helpful to make sure we become well rounded people. Well rounded isn't referring to getting fat, but fit in every aspect.

This last week was pretty slow in general. We had some good lessons but people were pretty occupied with Christmas and all that hoorah (no idea if that fits there or if it's the right word) so the work was slowed. This week will hopefully be a bit faster.

Stay hanging out with your family and friends for this week, I won't bore you with more New York news.

This week's challenge is to write out your New Year's resolutions. And don't be "that guy" who says "I'm not going to set resolutions just because it's a new year" or some other excuse. Take this opportunity to improve, because we all know we all need it.

Have a great rest of 2016!

-Elder Moon

December 19, 2016

Friends and Family!

Christmas is upon us! We have less than a week! Christmas is such a wonderful time of the year. I love when people are thinking about the true meaning of Christmas and why we should be celebrating it. It makes the world feel more loving and lively. I hope everyone has taken care of everything they need to for the holiday season and they don't get caught up in chaos. It's nice when you don't have to rush around for things at the last second (says every high school or college student about finals and projects... Oh wait, they never know that feeling of peace because they always procrastinate! Yes I've been there and unfortunately will probably be there again and again...)

Anyway, this last week we had some miracles! And some people dropped us. So every rose has its thorns. But the miracle is we had the director of proselyting come train the mission leaders and he told us to always ask for referrals and focus on the ones who are prepared.

Not new stuff, just reminders and tips for doing that. Well we did it that next day and had this kid accept a copy of the Book of Mormon, and then we got 2 referrals from him. When we went to sync our area books that night, he'd referred himself on Mormon.org. We texted him and he said he wanted a copy of the Book of Mormon for his grandparents and another one for his aunt and another one for his uncle and a Spanish one for his Spanish teacher and there's another family that might be interested and he just kept sending referrals!

Crazy!!

So the challenge this week is to prayerfully select a Christlike attribute you want to have as your gift to Christ this Christmas.

Write it down on a paper, describing how you'll act as you give this "gift" to Christ. Then seal it in an envelope and pack it away with your Christmas stuff when you take down the Christmas decorations.

Next year when you get them out, put it under the tree and open it Christmas morning (2017) and see how you did, if you really gave Christ a gift, or if you forgot to make the effort. Remember, today He wants our effort, not our perfection! Perfection is far far away (on Judea's plain) but effort is today!

Have a very Merry Christmas!

-Elder Moon

December 12, 2016

Friends and Family!

This week was good! We had an awesome baptism this last weekend and note to self: make sure the hot water works long before the baptism so you don't have to boil giant pots of water right beforehand. Trust me, it makes it much less stressful if the hot water works!

Taking over the other area in addition to ours was good. A bit of a slow start trying to learn who and where everyone and everything is.

We will be focusing on refining our teaching pool this week and seeing who is actually interested and which less active members are ready to come back into activity.

This week's challenge is to reach out to a person who hasn't been to church in a while. Regardless of your or their religion, invite them to either your or their church again!

Have a great week everyone!

-Elder Moon

December 5, 2016

Family and Friends,

I hope everyone has gotten the chance to see the Christmas video and that everyone has started doing the daily challenges. I don't know if I need a weekly challenge with this new Christmas thing going on!

This last week we had some good lessons. We met a few more people who are interested in learning more and we're excited to continue working in this area! We got news about transfers and Elder Gwilliam and I will be staying together. We will also be getting a third companion named Elder Self, so there will be three of us for a time. It will be an interesting twist on things, but I'm excited to see how it goes.

I've never been in a trio before!

Cindy is still doing very well and we are all excited for her baptism this Saturday! If anyone wants to come, it will be at 11 AM (Mom, sorry but mission rules won't allow you, or any family and friends for that matter). We also had several people come to church yesterday that haven't been in a while, so it was good to see them come back!

This weeks challenge is to continue (or start) doing the Christmas activities listed on Mormon.org. An additional challenge is to write

10 reasons why you love Christmas, and then share them with someone means a lot to you.

Love you all and have a great week!

-Elder Moon

Our District

November 28, 2016

Friends and Family!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Turkey day and Thanksgiving! I also hope nobody got hurt or intense over Black Thursday/Friday! This last week was slower but we were going around trying to share holiday specific messages. This week we are going to do a big push for the new Christmas video the church put out. If you haven't seen it, you should!

In fact, the challenge for this week is to watch it and get started on the "light the world in 25 ways over 25 days" service activities. It's just something little we can do each day to bring in the Christmas spirit. It will bring your family together and help you feel love this holiday season!

The doctors haven't found anything, the results were that everything is ok and that we will just wait a little longer and see if something gets better in the next few weeks. If not we'll try another approach.

Love you all!

-Elder Moon

#LIGHTtheWORLD this Christmas season. Serve others like Jesus did “In 25 Ways. Over 25 Days.”
https://www.mormon.org/christmas/light-the-world

November 21, 2016

 Brothers and Sisters,

I'd start with "Friends and Family," but we're all a family and that's what most people are thankful for this week. So I'll refer to you all as my brothers and sisters. And my dear brothers and sisters, I hope you all had and have a fantastic week. I sure had a good week! It had some appointments for both doctors and investigators. But it was good!

We also had a zone conference. And we have Thanksgiving coming up this week! That'll be super awesome!

This week's challenge will be short, but enjoy Thanksgiving! And try to be as grateful as you can all week, especially if you go shopping this Thursday/Friday :)

Have a great-ful week (pun intended)

-Elder Moon

PS The city disobeyed!  

November 14, 2016

Friends and Family,

This last week was kind of annoying with doctor's appointments, but other than those the work here is great! For those of you who haven't heard, I went to the doctor because I've felt like I've been in a dream for the last couple weeks. I function fine, I can remember things and speak normally and physically do everything I could before, I just feel like I'm subconscious the whole time, like I'm not the one doing the things. The doctor didn't see anything wrong but they want to monitor my heart for a 24 hour period just to be sure everything there is ok.

But on a happier note, C came to church and loved it! She wants to come every week and is on track to be baptized on December 3rd. We are so excited for her! E didn't want to come to church again, so we'll keep working with her and see what happened. There are a couple other people we're starting to work with, so more about them might be coming soon!

We had a primary program yesterday at church, and for those who aren't familiar with those, it's where the kids ages 3-11 go up and take turns saying some sentences of basic doctrines they believe and then sing children's songs/hymns about it. The local congregation here is very small and the program wasn't very good. Not super organized, not well done, the piano player could barely play just the melody, and the kids didn't really know what they were supposed to say. Good effort, but like I said, not very good.

Now think of that experience, that program that was far from a Broadway musical or a perfected performance, and compare it to life.

We are surrounded with imperfect people trying to do their little part and half the time they don't know what they're doing. Likewise, going to a church full of saintly gods would be intimidating and would cause us to feel insecure and down on ourselves. I'm thankful for the poorly performed primary program because it helped me remember nobody has reached perfection. It's much more inviting to have flawed people reach out to us and welcome us into their sphere of improvements than it is to have a flawless perfectionist make us feel judged, unloved, and less than acceptable.

My challenge this week is to find someone who has reached out to you in a time you needed it, imperfect as they were, and then thank that person for helping you when you were down. Even though they did it imperfectly, it probably helped a lot.

Have a wonderful week everyone!

-Elder Moon

PS- About the attached picture!  I saw this at someone's house we were teaching. Just the blue side with the clouds, and I said "I have to ask, is Winnie the Pooh on the other side of that? They said yes and I said I need a picture!  (This is the same blanket I had growing up!)  

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