Nov. 4, 2017 in Manchester, New Hampshire

Merry Christmas!

This week was pretty good, Mission Leadership Conference on Tuesday was good as usual. We were in a parade this week and it was pretty funny. In a two hour long Christmas parade, we were the ONLY float themed on Jesus Christ! Our float was a nativity and we handed out #LightTheWorld advent calendars. If you haven't heard of that yet, check it out! It's a worldwide initiative to do service each day leading up to Christmas! Elder Petersen and I were talking to people on the sides of the road and handing stuff out, and ended up getting left by the float!! 😂 We just walked along after that and asked people if they had seen our float and talked about how it was the only one about the real meaning of Christmas.

One really sad experience was as we were walking back to our car we encountered a man, his young son, and the boys friends. We talked to them and got a lukewarm from the dad who said they were another Christian faith. As we talked to the kids about Christmas we asked them if they knew what Christmas is all about and the first things they said surprised me. People always talk about how Christmas is really commercialized, but people and kids I've met have always known it is all about Jesus Christ. These kids however all shouted out things like: toys, gifts, money, Santa, and food! We told them about how it is because we're celebrating Jesus's birthday and they were clueless. Thanks mom and dad for teaching me the true meaning of Christmas! :)

I hope we all remember to love and serve others this season to honor Christ and His example to us as our Savior.

So, R. and G. played football with us on Thanksgiving. They couldn't make it to church this week, but D., G.'s younger sister who is a junior, came and she brought a friend! They both had a great time and D. wants to keep working towards baptism. It is great to see them all slowly making changes! :)


Love you all!
Elder Hunter Branch

Nov. 27, 2017 in Manchester, New Hampshire Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello and happy Thanksgiving! 

Hope your having a great week! We had a great week and saw some awesome progression, but no one ended up making it to church! Haha, you can't win them all. We'll try extra hard for that this week! :)

Also, saying we had no one at church isn't quite true. We found a less active sister whose family we're teaching now, and she came to church! She is from the D.R. and is awesome! She was baptized as a teen and hasn't been in forever! We met her on the street, brought her a Spanish Book of Mormon and she is doing great. Between her family and a few other we've met at her house (an amazing 10 year old named D. who is a genius and is super exited to learn, as well as a teen named O. who is pretty excited to come to church this next week) it has been a goldmine!

This week we went on exchange with a bunch of missionaries!

Nashua: Elder Collins (who replaced me in Exeter) and I had a great time, where we taught a lot, and talked to everyone we had time to and found a couple awesome people who want to learn.

Exeter: This was fun to be back in my old area!

I went with Elder Augir and had a good exchange. We didn't get to go see many people I knew, but we got to see some great people and promised some amazing things like health if they committed to pray and ask God to help them make it to church on a set date, as well as a promise they could quit smoking if
they read the Book of Mormon everyday for the rest of the year. We also had
an awesome experience with a less active dad and his family! We had dinner with them, helped prep for thanksgiving (first time sticking my hand in a turkey skin, that was exciting!), and shared a powerful thanksgiving/Restoration message! The family really felt the spirit. They plan to check out church soon! God really does direct this work!

Peterborough: I went with Elder Spadafora, who just left Manchester!

We tried to talk to people, but it was on the streets of a small, wealthy downtown on Black Friday, and I don't know if I've had a harder time getting people to talk!! We were knocking on car windows, sharing the #lighttheworld video, talking to people on the street and shops, and just NO ONE would have it! It was insane, it humbled me with finding for sure! We talked about why and talked about finding good finding atmospheres. Rich, Black Friday, dusk, and cold were not a good mix, especially using a new finding tool of light the world and transitioning to Book of Mormon and Restoration. We eventually found one really cool lady at Dunkin Donuts, thank goodness! Not everyone you meet is nice, even when you're just being a pal and spreading Jesus, but that's ok, it makes it exciting! ;)

Thanksgiving was great, aside from the seasonal allergies after playing football. We had two really cool guys we're teaching come to the game and they had a really good Time! They are both young, so it was huge to just get to connect. On top of that our team won, so good times!



On a sad note, we stopped teaching Carol who was going to get baptized. I'll spare you the details and just say things didn't work out there. It's sad and hard sometimes to be a missionary, but that's only when you lose sight for a second of how amazing the work you're doing is! :) There are so many amazing people we're teaching right now who are wanting to change their lives. :)

Hope you all have a great week,
Love ,
Elder Branch

Zone p-day activity

Thanksgiving dinner with the awesome Collett Family - thank you!

Boxed water while on exchanges

Thanksgiving with the Blair's

Dec. 5, 2016 in Exeter, New Hampshire A new companion...

Hi guys!!!

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 :)

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