A good member can change the attitude of an entire week.

Another good week. We had lots of lessons with investigators and less actives but we can never seem to get the to church. It's like saving your souls isn't important enough.. We keep trying. Gustavo and
Cinthya are doing awesome still. We took them to the temple visitors center on New Year's Eve and they seemed to enjoy it. It was a fun experience. We're struggling a little to get them to be progressing according to preach my gospel standards, but we're still working with them. To finish off New Year's Eve we watched ephraim's rescue as a zone then played volleyball. We went to bed at like 11 and that was about the extent of our partying. Definitely wasn't as good as the family traditions back home, but it was fun and we enjoyed it. We met a new black guy named Adrian. He was super prepared or so far has seemed to be. He was in the area book from a while ago and we finally got ahold of him and gave him a quick lesson using the pamphlets and he was really curious and wanted to know more. It was sweet! He told us he'd read the pamphlet and pray then start reading the Book of Mormon and to call him back this coming weekend. So we're keeping our fingers crossed. We had some other sweet lessons this week but I was on exchanges so elder cline got most of those. They were with Lena, the lady from Sudan, nick, a less active, and one with Gustavo and
cinthya. We're about to drop Jorge because we cant get him to actually do anything and he bails on our appointments and yeah. It's sad. We're going to give him some stuff to read and have him call us when he's finished with it or wants us to come back. Mr. Grant has been out of town all week but hopefully he gets back soon. Today it's about 50. Yesterday was a little warmer and this week it's actually supposed to get cold! Maybe. We shall see. Not a lot to report on with this week, but it was a good one and will hopefully roll into the next. Now that the holidays are over people might actually want to listen to and talk with us. We've had a few people tell us to talk to them after the new year so it's time to start bugging people again! Elder cline and I still get a long fine and president hints at us being together at least until the following transfer which will be March 3 I believe. So that should be fun. Hopefully we're still getting along than. He's really tall. Well not really, I'm just short.. Have I ever mentioned I hate being short? If not, now you know. Life is good, church is true and I know without a doubt the gospel is restored today. And be nice to the missionaries at home! A good member can change the attitude of an entire week.
Elder Lucas

With Elder Cline at the Washington D.C Temple

With Elder Huffaker

Star Wars was dope!

Hello everybody,
This week went quick which I'm always grateful for. We did a pretty fun metro activity on Tuesday. We just stand where people get off and hand out water bottles with different cards stuck in them. I'm pretty sure if we weren't dressed up people would quickly take them from us but they see we're religion oriented and they want nothing to do with us. They always think there's a catch too. They would always ask what it's for and we'd just respond with drinking. Humans are strange. We found a new investigator! Her name is Lena, she's from Sudan. We had a good first lesson with her and have a follow up appointment this week. So hopefully good things come from it. We also ran into a lady this week that let us in and as we were talking about prophets she told us she believes that Moses saw God but believes that the sentence "no man hath seen good" is also true. She also believes that Moses and Noah were prophets but that doesn't believe in prophets such as Adam.. It was quite ridiculous. I pulled us out before the bashing could continue. We had an awesome lesson with Gustavo and Cinthya and a member. We talked a little bit about the priesthood and refreshed the restoration. They're going out of town for a week so we're hoping Satan doesn't get a grasp on their souls in that time. Mr grant said he was coming to church but then he bailed... But we're still hopeful ish. Friday we had our mission Christmas conference which was pretty awesome. We had some speakers in the morning then had lunch from the our stake. The members of the McLean stake are sooo loaded. It's
insane the amount of money they have and spend on things. Just a side note. There's a lady in McLean 1st that owns like every dominos in the northern Virginia DC area. It's crazy. She hooks missionaries up. That's not what we had for lunch. There's another lady that loves missionaries and spending money and is totally ocd or something and everything has to be perfect. That being said our lunch was perfect. We just wanted food and she made it into a 5 star restaurant. We had salmon and pork and potatoes and jello and salads and a bunch of stuff. There are 218 missionaries. It was impressive. Oh the talks were good too:) we biked about a million miles this week. Elder cline doesn't seem to care that it takes 30 minutes to get to an area for a 10 second check up and then ride back. It's also been decently cold but not too bad yet. Christmas is supposed to be 70.. Someone bailed on talking in sacrament so we got a late night phone call asking if we'd speak so we did because us missionaries are best at that improve stuff. I spoke on finding hope through the savior and elder cline slightly roasted the ward on missionary work. It was good. Speaking of holidays, I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and New Years and I'm sad to not be around but I'm glad to be serving the crazy people of Virginia. Things are going well. It's hard, but it's life. I'm thankful for the gospel and I'm thankful for Christ.
Until next time,
Elder Lucas

A Christmas haul!

SSquad

Hola
This week was an interesting one. Nothing crazy happened but it was transfers and had a strange outcome. Last transfer elder cox was supposed to go zone leader but it didn't end up happening and
president told him they'd talk about it this transfer. On the Monday before transfers president and the APs call the missionaries that are going to be training, district leaders, or zone leaders. So Monday
night we were waiting and waiting for elder cox to get a phone call but it never happened which really through us off. Tuesday is when transfer doctrine comes out. We got it and I stayed here in the
tyson's ward and elder cox went district leader and finish trainer which he was a little upset to find out about because he never got a phone call. It was super sad to have him leave. We'd become super
close. I'm sure we'll stay that way though. My new companion is Elder Cline from bakers city Oregon. So that's fun. He seems pretty cool. He's definitely not elder cox but I think we'll get a long well. He's very outspoken which is good and bad I suppose. We'll see how things go. We had a couple really good experiences with Gustavo and Cinthya this week. We went over Thursday night for just a minute to introduce elder cline to them. We talked for a bit then they, in their way, basically bore their testimonies to us of what they feel and know and why they're progressing and it was super awesome! They understand the restoration and it's so clear to them. They're also seeing "truthfulness" signs that are really random to us but to them it means that they're heading in the right direction and that they know we have the true gospel. It's been super sweet! We had a ward Christmas party on Friday that they came to as well. The party was good and friendly and they thought so as well. Sunday, yesterday, they came to church and we had dinner with them at our ward mission leaders house which went super well and was a lot of fun. And we got Mr. Grant to church! It was sweet. Elder Cline and I have the same opinion of boldness and dropping the hammer style of working with inactives so I'm pretty excited for us to get that going. Our ward has tons so here's hoping and praying that we can start getting them back to church! We didn't get as much work done this week due to transfers but it's expected and we're doing our best to get started. Today we are going into DC again
for some cheap shopping and just enjoying it while it's warm. So I guess it's pretty weird right now but these last few days have been in the 70's.. It's quite ridiculous for the middle of December but it's
whatever I guess. It definitely doesn't feel like Christmas time. Another pretty interesting thing proving the world is small. We've talked with a member who served his mission in Russia and there's a guy in our ward that's a bit shady but he lived in Russia for 15 years and ran into this missionary and then about 13 years later moved back to the US and into a ward in Virginia. First day in the ward he ran into the missionary who is now married and has 3 kids. Pretty random and weird and cool. Also there's a missionary here that's now my zone lord and I've totally ran into him before at a Morgan girls choice dance. He lives in Moab. Small world.. Adding to my random rambling we
haven't ran into crazy people recently. It's rather odd. Speaking of Russians, we have a Russian missionary (from Russia) serving here and he's cool but if you say anything about communists he'll deck ya in the face. He's done it! He's with an elder that I've become good friends with from Arizona who is super "America is the greatest place on earth" and it's going to get really funny! So yeah, there's my randomness of the week to help the extension of my email. It's been a good interesting week. I actually miss elder cox a lot so that kind of stinks but it'll all be good. Thanks as always for the love and support.
Elder Lucas

Transfers were actually super hard. It was weird. There's not been a time in my life really where I've been so connected to a group of people. Other than leaving for the mission, but we've become super close. Even the sisters, Well sister. Sister Christiansen went home and it was sad because we'd all become super close. That's the life of a missionary, I just didn't realize how hard it could be.

  A while back there were like 5 of us in the back of a car and Elder Cox said he was squantched and we all laughed and the word squantch kind of just stuck so our group was turned into the squantch squad. We don't have much to keep ourselves entertained with so we do our best with what we've got.

My zone before transfers