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.

Week 6

This week was pretty interesting. It started out on Monday after P-Day had ended. A Member took us to a buffet for dinner and while we were there a guy who was working in the meat section started asking us a ton of questions, it got to the point that there was a line behind us and he still kept talking. He said he'd call us so that we could talk more, but he never did. The experience itself was cool though, it gave me an opportunity to teach in a different environment. We are still teaching Ted, the guy who let us into his house. He is the only investigator we have that is keeping the commitments he makes with us, the funny thing is that he is only meeting with us to gain physical knowledge and not spiritual knowledge, we're slowly working on that though. The last lesson we had with him was about the Plan of Salvation, for some reason my companion and I were being very bold during that lesson and telling him things that would probably make most people upset, but he completely understood what we were saying and he said that he really likes our view on life after death, he says it seems more fair and said it feels "right." After that lesson with Ted my companion told me that he's pretty sure my teaching style is meant to be bolder, he says he feels like that fits my personality, so we'll have to wait and see how that works out. I went on exchanges this weekend with the missionary leader of our area, I learned quite a bit about myself through our conversations, I was pretty bold with some of my questions and answer that I gave him and it threw him off guard, he said it's good that I was being bold because too many Missionaries are submissive to their leaders and don't put in their say. I hope he was being honest and not just trying to make me feel better. The Fireside went very well. Too be honest I originally thought it was going to suck but a good amount of people showed up and even one of our investigators came! My companion and I discussed where we were before this life and where we are going after this life and we actually answered some deep questions that people asked, all in all the people who were there felt the spirit and that was really the purpose of having it, so all together it went very well.

On Labor Day, we painted a members house from 9-1 and went to a Ward picnic from 2-5 it was a lot of socializing which oddly makes me more tired than actually working. But it was fun and productive so it was well worth it.

Oh yeah! I got hit on by an old lady. We were at an investigators home and her mother was there, and as we were leaving her mother basically told me that I was a very attractive young man and that I must have a lot of girls chasing after but that I should keep my eyes open still.

Or something like that. It was really weird...

Anyways, sorry this was so long. I guess I had a bit to say.

Love you all!

-Cody Eddenfield