For these are the things Jesus taught

Well, it is officially the new year, December has gone by very very quickly, I feel as if it just flew by and I don't know where the time went, it was by far the fastest month of the year, but I think that is pretty normal and was sort of expected with having to do all of the holidays stuff and then we also had transfers not to mention I went to Prague and have been training, and then as well that we had our Christmas training in Brno. So there was a lot of stuff that we have done this month.  Then of course we also had New years and progression training for the new missionaries. That's a lot to pack into a month, but we were able to do it.   I think it was a rather effective few weeks and I think we accomplished many of the things that we wanted to. Wit the new year however, we look into the future and we begin to plan for the things that are ahead. This next year will be a big one, it will be my last 6 months of my mission which means that I have to work hard and that I need to prepare for coming home eventually.  That doesn't really matter until a few more months.  I t's crazy to think about, but it is going to be one heck of a year. Well, this past week feels like ages and feels like the whole month, it was interesting and very fun but long, which is odd how that all worked out haha.

This past week we had the opportunity to go to a progression training for the new missionaries and that was very very cool as it always is. This was my 4th progression training and each one is different and I've learned something from each one. I remember how I felt at each one and it is just really cool. Each time most of it was the same, we watch the talk by Elder Rasband and we hear about safety and health from Sister McConkie and then we also teach a fake investigator. However this one was a little different because President gave us these points to follow, guidelines really and I had never heard them before. It was off-script though and Elder Earl who trained last transfer too told me that it was different and not the same as last time, it was the first time for him to hear those bullet points as well. It was cool and we had a good lunch and then we came back, that happened on Tuesday. Then Wednesday was New Years Eve and we watched movies and taught lessons. We watched The Saratov Approach, it was a really good movie and it was the best of the group we could watch but I wouldn't suggest it to any parent of a missionary or anyone who is waiting for a missionary or anyone who is going on a mission soon, it's pretty scary and would probably cause me to worry if I didn't already know Slovakia was an extremely safe place. Definitely wouldn't suggest it to any Russian missionary or parent haha. The next film we watched was God's Army, and that was interesting, it was very different and showed a different mission culture than what I'm accustomed too. It was funny and good but probably wouldn't watch it again at home, heck I never watched church films to begin with so with this kind of movie, it has no chance haha.

The rest of the week went fine, we worked hard and we tried to find new investigators and we tried to meet with the ones that we had. We found a new man, he is pretty cool, he's older and based on what we told him and taught him and his responses we agree on many things, now it is only a matter of getting him to act on those feelings and getting him to work on joining the church and stuff like that. We also met with some of our other investigators and some of our other ones have shown some more progress and willingness to learn. Our Chinese friend invited us down to his store to talk and he has shown a desire to learn but is afraid of his family because none of them want to learn or believe in God, or the Christian God at least, he says his current religion and peaceful and doesn't believe it so we're working with him. We're working our hardest though and I hope that we'll continue to have success and see the lord's hand in our work.

Well, that's pretty much everything that I have, this next week is going to be a good working week and we're finally going to be able to get in the groove of a good work ethic before we have training again next Tuesday. I found out this week that we'll go for training on the 13th and then on the 14th we'll do the foreign police stuff so the new Elders can get their visas, so I'm somewhat looking forward to that but I think I will try to meet with all of my previous investigators when I was there on Tuesday night because we'll have to stay over night. So I hope that I can see them all! Anyways thanks all for your support and love and advice, I wish you all a great week and hope you have a wonderful new year!

Elder Ferrell