A Very Happy Thanksgiving Week

The Pioneer Ward Missionaries (Elders Quayle, Holman, Garff, Peason, Paddock, and Howell) and the Olivers 

This week was awesome!  I loved the whole week!  We've been having LOTS of fun, ate LOTS of food, and have seen LOTS of little miracles.  Let me tell you about each of those highlights.

Lots of Fun

Elder Holman and I have amped up our fight against the cockroaches.  We had noticed that every  time we would try and get close to them to smack them with a shoe, they'd climb into a little hole or a cabinet or something and be lost forever so last P Day we decided to get creative and we bought some PVC pipe and some nerf darts and made blow dart guns to be able to get them at a distance.  Needless to say we're pretty much professional blow dart shooters and the cockroaches don't stand a chance now.  Every night we've been playing games of horse in the living room too where one of us will shoot something across the house and the other person will have to hit it too.  Have I mentioned how I really enjoy serving with Elder Holman?  We've had a good 4 months together and its been lots of fun.

The Cockroach Killer

Lots of Food

Sometimes being a missionary has some pretty good days.  One of those was Thanksgiving.  Don't worry, we didn't starve at all.  We had one dinner at 12 in Seward with the Lieske Family, another in Lincoln at 2 with the Oliver family where we had planned to do service so we even got to eat in not proselyting clothes which was completely fine by me, and then a Hispanic Thanksgiving dinner of Tamales at 6 with Hermana Chairez and her family.  I'm fairly certain that all the weight that I've lost since I got to Crete came back in just one day.  Oh well.  Eating with the Olivers was by far my favorite though.  We ate soooo much food and then in between food and pie we all went and played games downstairs and tried to recuperate before we went off to eat with Hermana Chairez.  

Recuperating from Dinner #2

Lots of Miracles

The biggest miracle of all this week was with Fernando and Veronica.   There we were one morning doing studies and we hear a big knock on our door. They live in the apartment right above ours so they come down and knock our door a lot to ask questions or favors or stuff like that.  We open the door and there stands Fernando with this big, huge smile on his face!  After talking to him for a little bit, he paused for a second, and then said,
 "Oh and Veronica got an answer!  We were sitting there on the couch talking after you guys left that night (See last week's email) and all of a sudden I look over and she's sitting there praying.  I let her finish and all of a sudden she says ' Fernando! He is!'   And I said, 'Who is what?'  'Joseph Smith!  He's a prophet!  I was praying and I asked God and before I even finished asking I felt something say He Is.  He is, Fernando!' "

As Fernando was telling us this he had the biggest smile on his face and you could tell that he'd gotten an answer as well!
It was just another testimony builder to me that when you pray with faith, God gives you the answer.  If people actually do what we invite them to do, the answers come, testimonies are built, and conversion takes place.  Its a really cool thing to be a part of and its one of the many reasons I love being a missionary. 

I'm glad that you all had a great Thanksgiving.  This year as I thought about the many things that I'm grateful for, I realized that this past year the Lord's blessed me with lots of miracles.  I'm grateful for this chance that I have to be a part of this work.  I know its true.  I'm grateful for the blessing that I've had to grow up in the Truth with a family that loves me, cares about me, and has the same eternal goals as I do.  I love you!  I hope you have a great week!

Lots of love,

Elder Zack