More Pictures

1st is more blizzard :D

2nd is Ananelli :D Jose and Maribel's daughter! She doesn't smile at anyone but me :)

3rd is the snowman we built for a kid's birthday

4th is the scarf that Jessica gave me because I didn't have one :P

Blizzard

This was written on Wednesday November 24th.

Hi!

I was gonna ask Sis Smith to let you know that we are emailing at this time because the place we email will be closed tomorrow for thanksgiving! Anyways, this week has been awesome. I am going to send as many pictures as I can, multiple emails if that is what I have to do. So guess what... there was a huge blizzard last night! We definately worked in it too. We had appointments to keep, so we walked through the blizzard to get to them. It actually wasn't that bad, but today its a whoppin 11 degrees outside haha! I'm so grateful I decided to buy that huge jacket from Mr Mac's. The baptisms were awesome last week! SO MANY PEOPLE SHOWED UP! Claudia and her son Kevin were baptized. So neat! Kevin was really shy and didn't want anyone to see him in the baptismal clothing. We had tons of investigators there too! We had our investigators that are getting baptized this weekend that were there. The work keeps moving on too. Carmen's cousin, Jessica, has been freaking out about the snow, and constantly calls to check up on us. She texted us as soon as she heard about the blizzard that was coming, and told us to stay inside. Imagine her shock when we go knocking on her door to ask if she could give us a ride home. Apparently it was pretty bad out there, but the Lord definately blessed us for being out there.

We received a referal this last Sunday for a part-member family. They just moved here and the husband is still active in church and brings his wife every week to church. COOL! So we ended up calling them and setting up our appointment with them for last night. Last night was the blizzard.... so funny! So we walked all the way across our area to get to their house in the blizzard. We got there 20 minutes late, but when we knocked on the door and Sarah (the wife) answered, she could not believe that we had come all this way. Of course she invited us in, and her husband came out out of the back room and kept saying," I knew you would still come! I knew the snow wouldn't stop you!" After our first meeting with Sarah, she is set up to baptized on the 18th of December!

Another investigator that we have been working with for a while, Yasmin, accepted baptism last night for the 11th of December. It was a real testimony builder for her to see that she was so important to God that her messengers would walk through a blizzard to still come and meet with her.

So I got chastised by our investigators that our getting baptized this weekend. They felt like I didn't like them, because whenever I talked, it was about the gospel. Any other time they were talking with us about other things, I was silent. They didn't know I was silent because I don't understand their accent (I still have a hard time understanding alot of the time). Maribel looks straight at me and says, "No entiendas que estamos diciendo o no le gustamos?" Basically, she wanted to know if I hated them or I just didn't understand them. I explained to them that I have a hard time understanding and she turns around and tells me that I need to ask them if I didn't understand something. SLAP TO THE FACE! They are in their early 20's, so we are really good friends with them. I figure thats why they would get so offended when I didn't talk.

Anyways, the first picture that I attached is of Claudia and Kevin's baptism.

Second is us in the blizzard last night :D

I will send more pictures in other emails.

I love you all!

Love,
Elder Scott Donner

Still No Visa :D

Hi dur!!!!!

I can't believe another week has gone by again. Totally ridiculous!!!! But the work is moving on and I'm working my tail end off :) Answering questions first. STILL NO NEWS ON THE VISA! SORRY!!!! :( I'm pretty sure the Lord is keeping me here because he has more work for me to do. There are so many people we would not run into and start teaching if it wasn't for the efforts of all three of us in the companionship. I feel very strongly about that. I'm thinking I might even be here til christmas, but we will see :) I don't know that I will be because the next transfers we have are on the 15th of December! What a poop day to have transfers! 10 days before christmas! Not to worried though :) The Lord knows better than I do :)

With Angel, unfortunately he couldn't make it to church on Sunday. We called him and he said that he was trying so hard to leave work. He works at the swap meets here on Saturdays and Sundays and unfortunately couldn't leave. But next Sunday he said he can for sure be there :) So he is going to be baptized on the 4th of December instead.

Now the deal with Pdays. Usually we get up early and go to the temple but that will be changing I guess. Afterwards we go to the Smith's house and they feed us because they love us :) Afterwards its off to the stores to do our shopping and then after shopping, off to email ( I'm there now :P). After the emailing we go home and go to Pday activity which usually is some kind of sport like dodgeball or volleyball or kickball or basketball etc etc. That lasts until about 5:00 and then we go home for dinner and head off to work at 6:00 :) Sometimes it flies by and sometimes it doesn't :P

This weekend we are set up to baptize Claudia and her 12-year-old son Kevin. SO EXCITED FOR THIS! I pretty much love their family. Their kids are a handful and I love playing with them. Elder Tory gets mad when I do because he said he doesn't like (hates) kids. They are so ready to be baptized though! Kevin is excited to start going to scouts and stuff! Claudia said I speak spanish beautifully for only having started speaking it in September. I told her "Muchas gracias. Pienso que la problema que tengo es no peudo entender que las otras personas dicen" She about died because she said I have a beautiful spanish accent :P She wanted to know if I sang because she would like to hear me sing something in spanish. Ya.... not gonna happen jaja!!! She also said she liked my scarf :P I will send pictures of that next week because I don't have any pictures right now. I got the scarf from Jessica ( yes it is a girls scarf but no one has to know that :P), Carmen's cousin.

Ok so I attached 2 pictures. Eva, the women who we baptized, was originally going to be the only one getting baptized last Saturday. Her daughter came with her to her interview though, so we took that as Heavenly Father was telling us to get her in there too. She didn't feel ready but she did the interview anyways. Cynthia (the daughter) and Eva (the Mom) were baptized last weekend :D

The second picture is the picture of the little girl in la familia De Alba. She kept saying "Quiero tomar foto! CHEESE CHEESE CHEESE!" So she took a picture of me (kinda) and I took a picture of her! She's really a cute kid!

Anyways, thats all for now. I LOVE YOU ALL

Love,
Elder Scott Donner

Continued Blessings

Hola Familia!!!

Once again we are sooper busy in the missionary work. I have an amazing story to tell you from last night really quick. So we had received a referal from the mission office for a man named Angel. We had been trying to set up an appointment with him for quite a while and they would always fall through, but he didn't want us to drop him. Well last night, we went on exchanges. Me and Elder Duarte (the 2 kinda not new but still really green with a good understanding of what to do missionaries) had our first appointment with him. We actually went through with this one. So we get in and we are introducing ourselves (me explaining that I had only been speaking spanish for 2 months) and he introduces himself. Now something that we had been told in zone meeting this week, is that our zone is not allowed to add someone as a new investigator until we commit them to baptism. Me and Elder Duarte wanted to add him THAT NIGHT. So the whole time we are talking up how Jesus Christ was the perfect example for us and how he was baptized by someone holding authority and also explaining that we have this authority. We asked him if he thought it was important to follow the example of Christ and he absolutely said it was. So then we committed him to baptism on the 27 of November. HE ACCEPTED!!!! The Lord has continued to bless us this month already. We have 12 people on date for this month. HOW AWESOME.

Still heard nothing on the visa. No one from the MTC that I came with has gone yet. I would kinda like to stay here at least until Thanksgiving :P BTW, we got to press apples at Sister Smith's house this week with an apple press from the 1800s!!! Pictures!!!

Mom the only music I can listen to is MOTAB and EFY Music (on Pdays).

I'm glad to hear Jordan is the MTC. He better be ready for a shock!!! HAHA

Anyways, I love you all!

Love,
Elder Donner

1st Baptism

Hola Familia!!!
I am so sorry that I didn't really even send really an email last week. There were so many problems with last week and everything was working against me! But I have time to write and send pictures this week :D (Unfortunately the pictures didn't transfer)
Everything is going super good!!! I'm in my second transfer now because transfers are today haha. Our entire district stayed the same, which is good. I definately love everybody in the district and am glad to still see them here. Plus I like our investigators and still want to teach them jaja!!!!
Anyways, guess what.... Carmen asked me to baptize her so I got to baptize her!!!! My first baptism yeya!!!! It was a really neat experience and she was super excited to be baptized. She was a little sad afterwards because she realized she wasn't going to see us as much anymore, so it's been funny because she has been making every excuse to see us now jaja!!! She tried to hug me at the baptism too and her aunt had to tell her that you can't hug missionaries jaja!!!!
Ana and Eric, who we baptised on the 23, are doing good and are super excited. Eric is receiving the priesthood, and he is shining more brightly than anyone jaja. We were teaching Benjamin's wife, Lucila, and had a baptismal date for this saturday. She knew she needed to be baptized but she was raised in a christian church. Unfortunately she decided to get baptized in the christian church this past Sunday. She started crying when we told her we wouldn't be coming over to teach her anymore. We still will check up on her but not as often. I still believe she will get baptized, but it will take alot longer than we thought it would.
Sleeping hasn't been a problem lately, which is good because we are super busy teaching a bunch of people. A lady that we had been trying to contact for the past while was never home and never returned our phone calls, so we dropped her. Just this past sunday, though, she showed up at church and so we started teaching her this week. So many times have I seen the blessings from the Lord when we as missionaries are doing what we are supposed to! It is amazing how the Lord blesses us in so many different ways.
I haven't heard anything on my visa, but I'm ok for now :P