Email October 13, 2014

Hey, hey, hey!!! Hope everyone has had an amazing week! I know I had a pretty great week. One big reason is because I got to see Meet the Mormons!!! WOW is it a good show! Good-golly-goodness. If you haven't already, GO SEE IT! It is pretty amazing. We were able to watch it at the stake center in Auburn as an entire missionary zone. It was pretty awesome. Go see it! As for the rest of the week, not a ton really happened. We and the four other elders in our district have started working on a big fireside for next month that is aimed at getting the members in our wards to get more comfortable with doing missionary work with family and friends and any other situation they want. However, I will most likely not be here for it seeing as transfer calls happen early November and the fireside will be late November. I've been in Grass Valley for almost 4 1/2 months already, just like Yuba City and Redding were both 4 1/2 months haha. I'm most likely heading out because I've been here a while and I'm finishing training Elder Raab this transfer and trainers usually get sent somewhere after their second transfer with their greenie. So yeah, I'm expecting to leave. Sad :( but it'll be good. We recommitted Jennifer to taking a church tour and to taking the lessons! I'm especially excited because she wants to do the church tour before I leave! :D So hopefully we'll be able to get a couple lessons in before I leave too. She has amazing potential! Sounds familiar, right before I leave an area hahaha. But I'm excited for it. She could use it so much. Fernando was out of town allllll weeeeeeeeeeek...so nothing to report there. :/ Hopefully he still hasn't drank since a few weeks ago. He really wants to go to church with us and wants to start working the church's Addiction Recovery Program too, so he also has some great potential and has made great progress already. He could go places! Dan Robinson is an investigator from the former investigators list who we stopped by and he said he wanted to start taking the lessons again. But when we stopped by this week for our appointment he said right out of the gate that he doesn't want to take the lessons anymore because he has the feeling that he's just not going to want to do it again. So instead of trying, he wants to stop before he ever can progress. But! We talked with him about it and actually ended up clearing up a TON of concerns he had about joining the church. Either he misunderstood the missionaries the first few times around or they didn't teach him quite right, but he didn't think the church allowed and therefore was scared God would be angry with us if we read anything but the scriptures or watched movies or listened to not church music. So we cleared that up easy and he said he felt a lot better about things now. That was a really cool experience because just that morning we had been watching The District, basically training video segments that the church uses to help missionaries learn from other missionaries' experiences. It was the one where two missionaries worked through struggles with an investigator they had and we were both like, man I wish we could be like them! And then BAM we were! Super cool. I love it. Well, other than that I guess I only have one piece of business left to take care of: I hit my year mark on Thursday the 16th!!! Only 52 weeks left!!! Goodness it goes by fast. I wish I could serve another one at this age. It feels like I just left a month or two ago. It can't be half over yet! And another crazy thought, either one year from today or tomorrow I will be landing in the Salt Lake Airport!!! Ahhhhh! Insane!!! I don't want to think about it yet though, I still have another 365 days to do the Lord's work! I've seen incredible things happen so far and I can't wait for another year to see miracles work in my life and in the lives of others. The mission is incredible, and it's already half over. :( But I can't wait to get home and see you guys again either. Ah. Mixed emotions. I know where I'm supposed to be, though. And I know I'm doing what the Lord wants me to do. And I love doing it. :) Love you guys! Have a great week! Love, Elder Cevering