Week 9

Hello all! This week was fairly slow, we had many lessons set up but they almost always fell though. We did get to meet with a less active member whom doesn't agree with the idea of religion but he said that he is open minded so we're excited to start teaching him. We went down to Watseka on Saturday and we had next to no luck, we met with two people out of the 30 or so we had set to visit. It's alright though because the two people we met were less active members and they had no clue that next weekend was General Conference so they were grateful that we stopped by and told them about it. For those whom don't know what that is, it is essentially when the leaders of our church and the prophet speaks to the world and to the members of the church. It happens twice a year and is a very spiritual experience where we learn about things pertaining to our time that can help us grow spiritually and help us to draw closer to God. I invite all to watch it because it's pretty sweet. Now that I'm finished with that tangent, on Saturday our ward had a teachers training where we heard from members of the Stake high counsel. We learned about how to be better teachers and I really got a lot out of it, I've tried using some of the techniques and I've already seen a difference in my teaching skills. We taught class in 3rd hour again and I'd say it went fairly well. We talked about the priesthood and our responsibilities pertaining to it. It just came to my mind that I've been out for more than two months already, I thought time wasn't going by quickly but clearly it is.

That's all I have to report on this week!

Love you all!

-Cody

Week 8

One transfer over, 1 million to go. Elder Freitas has left me and Elder Weigel has entered my presence. Elder Weigel is pretty cool, he is hard-working and a good Missionary. I'm still figuring out how his gears grind and how we can work effectively together. He's been nice so far though. He also happens to be district leader. So my MTC companion, Elder Freitas and Elder Weigel have all been District leaders...I Don't know what it means but it's really weird. They all also started their missions after they were 20, weird stuff.

The new missionaries came in last week and I got to talk to a lot of them and it feels weird not being the greeny, I was able to give them some tips though and that felt good.

Anyways, this week was pretty good. The same as usual, we taught quite a few people. One person who was really interested and really wanted us to stop by ended up being in the Sisters area. It doesn't really matter though, as long as he gets the chance to learn I don't care who does it. One of our investigators was really excited to come to church and we found her a ride and everything, she didn't answer her door though. So we're not sure what's going on with her but we're going to find out. We gave talks on Sunday...they went fairly well. We were asked to speak on fasting and we had one day to prepare, so that was fun. My talk was supposed to be 7 minutes long but went on for 15....oops. It worked out for the better in the end though. On Saturday we helped clean up the Kankakee river for an hour and then went to help a member move. The river was beautiful but there was a looooot of trash. We even found a hobos "house" with a bunch of random junk, it was pretty cool. After that I tricked Elder Weigel into eating a cow tongue taco, he liked it until he found out what it was...he says he felt sick the whole night since he knew what he ate but I know he was just being a baby. Those are all the cool things that happened this week. I'm still learning and growing as the days pass by but I know that as I do so I'll be able to help bring more of my brothers and sister into the knowledge of truth.

Love you all!

-Elder Eddenfield

Week 7

Hello All! This week was pretty great. We talked to a lot of awesome people and got chased off of another churches property, so that was fun. Long story short we were walking down the street and two gentlemen called us over and we started teaching them and then this huge bulky guy runs out of the front doors to the building and starts yelling, we don't need any cults standing on our holy ground! So we left obviously and looked back and realized it was a street church...whoops. It was kind of funny though so I wasn't bothered.

Funny thing was that later that night we went to McDonalds for dinner and found one of the gentleman there and finished talking to him, crazy world huh? Mitchell has been coming out with us a lot lately. He is such an awesome guy and he has such a strong spirit about him.

The rest of the week was pretty normal, we did a lot of service on Saturday like normal and we're helping a member move all day today.

Yesterday was amazing though, we were searching for a young man named Eric and couldn't find his house and as we were walking back to the car we met a woman on her doorstep and she invited us up to teach her.

We gave her a quick lesson and asked her if she believed what we were telling her and she said absolutely and then we asked her if she would be baptized as she continued to learn more and she said absolutely again. First transfer and I'm already getting people like this, I'm praying it stays like this.

Elder Freitas is being transferred to an area called Ottawa and I'm staying here. I'll tell you about the new companion I'll be receiving, next week. It's harder than I thought to think that I'll be making all these friends and then leaving them two months later. I'm definitely going to miss Elder Freitas but he lives two hours from home so it's not like I'll never see him again.

It's starting to get much colder, this week was in the 60's. In Cali it's still in the 90's so I'm definitely not used to it. But I can handle the cold so I'll be fine.

Other than that I have nothing else to really report other than the fact that I can tell that I'm slowly becoming a better teacher. I'm definitely not a good one yet but I'm working on it. Also, sorry to everyone who is getting this for the first time as it may seem confusing. This is just my general email.

Love you all!

-Elder Cody Eddenfield

P.S. I do have Facebook Messenger but I'm not allowed to use it to contact family or friends so they have asked me to tell everyone to not message me, I personally appreciate the messages but I'll be banned from using it if it gets too distracting.