College Kids Listen!!

Hey everyone,

This e-mail is coming in late this week, because we spent the morning playing PCB in football. We drove out to the border of our Zone to duke it out with our neighbors across the border. It was a fun three hours on the beach. I saw elders that I hadn't seen in months there. Elder Chidester, Elder Zaugg, Elder Packard. They are all great guys and it was good to play some football with them. Others, like Elder Bawden, Elder Nestor and Elder Johnson built a big sand castle. It was great. The beach provides so many activities for everyone. Except of course water activities. Oh well, only 7 more months. ;)

This week in Niceville was great. I don't remember what day was Halloween for everyone here. I heard Saturday, then I heard Sunday, but no one came to our house on either day. Weird. We had an awesome experience this week. I will try to explain it all to you, but I'm not the best at telling stories. Here it goes.

On Thursday we had our appointments cancel. Lame. So we decided to go play ultimate with the Cooper family. They are less active and we've been working with them. We drove over to the field and no one was there. We guessed that it meant we were supposed to go tracting. Because it was dark outside we decided to go to an apartment complex. They are usually awake. There was one close to our apartment. I was driving our sporty mini-van and we pulled into the parking lot. It was a weird design and somehow we ended up in the back of the complex. What was worse, was that we drove past a bunch of girls on our way there. It was a college apartment. There is a small community college in Niceville, and we were at their apartments. As we past the girls, memories of campus began to flood back. Not the best memories for a missionary. We all got out of the van and began to knock the doors. The first door was empty, but there were people outside just chillin'. We began to talk to them about how we are missionaries and all that good stuff. As we were talking to them the girls we past decided to come join us. If red flags weren't waving when we passed them, they were waving now. We began to talk to them being very careful with our words. Then one girl asked, 'Who is Jesus Christ?' We don't hear that to often in the south, so we were thinking it was a trap. As we stepped cautiously into the conversation we found out that her friend really didn't know. She said that one time in her life she believed, but now she didn't. We began to testify about Jesus Christ, the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. By the time we were done something amazing happened. The fear that we had about being caught some where we weren't supposed to be left and the spirit jumped right in. We were talking to about 15 people all at the same time. Some weren't really interested, but others were. The one girl who didn't believe in Jesus Christ still doesn't, sad I know, but she committed to read the Book of Mormon. We also talked with others, gave out 6 Book of Mormons and set up lessons to meet with some of them. One guy, Quinton had been on his own search and had found a nice church in Niceville. He was doing missionary work too. Talking to everyone. Quinton actually prepared the way for us to teach everyone else. One of his friends, Michelle is meeting us on Wednesday. After we were done talking with everyone we were in shock. That never happens when a group of people want to listen and are prepared for what we have to say. Let alone a group of college students. We were stunned as missionaries, but we still had an hour left.
We went back home to grab our coats (its getting colder, btw, Halloween looked so cold!). We went right back to the same apartment complex, but this time we went to the front. We began to knock on some of the doors. First was a guy named Ofeao, he said we could come back and teach him. Second guy was Jeff, he also said we could come back. The third door was the second miracle of that night. We knocked and heard a loud, 'Come In!'. We opened the door and there were 6 guys watching the Florida State Football game. We told them our purpose and guess what. They let us come in, turned off the TV and allowed us to begin teaching. We spent the next 45 min teaching those boys about Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. It was so cool to watch them listen to us with intent. As we got to know them they asked if we had met Quinton yet. How cool!? Quinton had prepared another group for us to teach. We gave each boy a Book of Mormon and they said that next Saturday we could come back. We gave out over a dozen copies of the Book of Mormon in 2 hours to college students. Haha. It was so cool to be a part of it. Elder Merkley, Elder Nestor and I were in such shock that we didn't know what to do. Except to get down on our knees and pray. It was amazing. Elder Merkley wants to go back to campus. I think I'll just stay on this campus.
Niceville is so awesome. They had a huge ward service day on Saturday. Fixing up the church yard. It was great to be working with so many members to beautify the building they use. Then on Sunday I gave a talk. It was only five minutes long, because the ward missionary before me took 25 minutes in her talk. But that's ok, its the way it should be.
I love being a missionary.
Thanks for the package. I got grandma's too. I'll send the other card to you soon.
Love ya's