It's been an exciting week! J. is pretty great! The stake preformed The Messiah this week and J. and The General came to it! :) It was so fun!! She was sick for church but she is doing really well! :)
E. is a sad case, we were worried about what would happen with him because he doesn't have really any support at home, he has a hard family situation. We talked with President Blair about him in interviews too and President had the same concern. E. also has a really hard time reading, and the children's copy of the Book of Mormon we ordered for him a month and a half ago never came in, so he hasn't made any progress reading. This week when we stopped by, his grandma who seemed kinda out of it.. answered and said she didn't think E. was interested anymore. :( So whether that is the deal, or whether he has no support in the Gospel at home, we had to stop teaching him. Missionaries will have to go by in a few years and hopefully then E. can have a fair chance to find out the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
We are visiting The General about once a week, and other than that we have a bunch of people we don't get to see that much. The people here are very blunt and not overly friendly as a whole, so it can be pretty hard to get in with people, but we will keep trying. We want to do more finding again because there aren't a lot of solid people we are teaching right now.
I am doing pretty well, it is fun to be serving a mission! I bought a bunch of winter gear this week, so hopefully I'll be fine in the cold! It was 24 last night as we were walking around! :)
So I just finished training today, and so we have transfers now! We're sad, but Elder B. will be leaving Exeter and going to Oxford, Maine. It has been really cool and touching to visit people and see what a difference Elder B. has made in the area, since he will be leaving tomorrow morning. Elder B. said he didn't really get to know the members until I came cause then everything was just fun and we could be ourselves, so I'm glad I got to come here and serve with him! :) Exeter still needs a lot of work, but he has laid a great foundation to rebuild the area! :)
I was called as the District Leader right out of 12 week training - pretty crazy! My new companion will be Elder C. who came out with Elder B., so he has been out for a year and three months.
I sure love you all and hope everything is going well! One cool thing from this week is that S. (who got baptized a little while ago) was asked by his 9 year-old daughter to baptism her this week! :) It was so cool! He is going to have her take the lessons first and he's going to talk to her mom, but it is cool to see her desire already as she has seen the change in her dad! :)
Love you all again!
Elder Branch :)
Love you all again!
Elder Branch :)
The I.'s are the real deals, we really have awesome people in this ward! :)
They had a farewell dinner for Elder B. because he was being transferred.
Transfer meeting
(pictures from the mission facebook group)
Our Christmas Tree
My new companion, Elder C., taken during an video by Sister Blair about #lighttheworld
