Elder Max Kimball: Atlanta Georgia Mission: Investigators, baptisms, and a new companion!

November 11, 2013

We did get to see D and his sisters. Both of them actually went to mutual last week which was cool. None of them came to church though, because they all got sick. We did I get a lady named B on date and she's really sweet. I'm emailing on an iPad so I don't have time to say a whole lot.
Thanks for the sweaters. That can probably be my Christmas present because I don't really need anything else. There is a ward thanksgiving dinner this Saturday but for actual Thanksgiving day I'm not sure yet where we will be going. And I will probably stay here when Elder Summers leaves. It will be alright though. Well that's about it. Probably won't have time to send another weekly email I'll do one next week for sure though.

November 18, 2013

Elder Parker, Elder Summers (right before he goes home), and Elder Kimball

Hey mom. I'll talk about our investigators and Thanksgiving in another email, but some cool stuff happened. Elder Summers is doing good but excited to go home. We were just talking about how long of a drive it would be for you, (we went to his homecoming), but figured you had thought about that already. I love the pictures and will send another email.

So this week was pretty awesome. On Tuesday we got to go on exchanges with the zone leaders and that is always a fun and productive time. Elder Summers went with one of them and met a lady named T and set a baptismal date with her for the first week of December and apparently she is pretty cool. I have yet to meet her but hopefully I can get over and teach her after Elder Summers leaves.
I went over and taught our investigator with a date. We actually had a way good lesson with her. We committed her to stop drinking coffee and smoking and then moved up her baptismal date a week to November 23. Since then she has been doing awesome. She only smoked one cigarette yesterday and cut down from three pots of coffee to two cups but she committed to stop all together today. I don't remember how much I have talked about her so I'll tell you about her briefly. We started teaching her 30 year old son that lives with her 2 months ago. He wasn't really progressing but she was always nice. She had actually met with missionaries more than 30 years ago and her half sister ended up getting baptized, and is still active in Michigan. So we started officially teaching her and she is amazing. She reads the Book of Mormon everyday and every time we give her a pamphlet she reads it like 4 times so she understands it. She knows a ton of people in our ward, so it's really easy to get her in peoples houses for lessons. If things keep going well she will get baptized on Saturday and she has asked me to baptize her.
Another big thing we had this week was our ward Thanksgiving dinner. That was really good because we got a lot of our investigators there. So a lot of members got to meet them and I barely even ate anything because I was busy walking around talking to all of them.
That about does it for this week and hopefully I have good news about our investigators baptism next week.

Elder Kimball and Elder Summers

Elder Kimball, Elder Rogers (roommate at the MTC), and Elder Bowman

Elder KImball, Elder Summers, and Elder Parker

November 25, 2013

So this week week we finally got to baptize B. It was a very good baptism and everything went smoothly. She is very happy and is already giving us referrals to teach her family and friends, so that's pretty awesome. Because of transfers and stuff that was about the most productive thing that we did all week. I did get a new companion named Elder Schnell. He has been out just one transfer longer than I have, and he just dropped from being a zone leader back to a district leader. He is a very good missionary and we are going to get a lot done here. That's about it for this week but hopefully lots to talk about next week.

Elder Kimball, B, and Elder Schnell

December 2, 2013

So this week we had some pretty exciting stuff happen. We have been making a very big push to work through members as much as we can to get referrals. And teaching part member families, and people that are less active, that have kids that aren't baptized. So this week without having to do any finding, really, we were able to set two baptismal dates. One with a guy whose wife has been a member for a really long time and he has finally decided to get baptized. Another with a 10 year old kid that his parents want baptized and they are going to start coming back to church.

about to get kicked off computer. might be able to email more later

December 9, 2013

This week was pretty awesome because we had a baptism. It was for a guy named M whose wife has been a member her whole life and they have been married for almost 20 years. Missionaries have been teaching him for years and he never wanted to be baptized. But then he lost his job and got another one down in Macon. So he was living down there 4 days out of the week. He met the Elders down there and started taking the lessons. It was a pretty easy baptism for us. The Macon Elders just mailed us his record and we went and filled up the font on Saturday. He got confirmed in church and then got the priesthood after church. It was pretty amazing that something like a lost job led him to get baptized.
We still have another baptism set for the 28 of December for a 10 year old boy that hasn't been baptized. We are hoping that getting him baptized will make the rest of his family more active. But things are going great here. People are just walking up to us at church and telling us they have someone that needs to be baptized and then we take care of it. We are going to start teaching a less active family that has two kids that are not baptized and that should go pretty well also. Thats about it this week.

December 16, 2013

Hello. Nothing huge to report this week, but some exciting things. We have been talking a little bit to B's soon to be daughter in law, T. She didn't seem very interested, but she took a Book of Mormon and said she would start reading it. We asked her if she would come to church, and she said she would try it out. Well we got to church yesterday and B was there without her because her son had been sick all night so she hadn't gotten any sleep. But then after church she called us and asked us to come talk to her. She felt bad she missed church, and had read a surprising amount of the Book of Mormon, and had a bunch of questions that we answered. So hopefully she will continue to read and be able to make it to church. We did have our ward Christmas party this week . It was pretty fun, except the missionaries had to sing, which wasn't my favorite. We did have the best pulled pork that I have ever had in my life though. I had so much of it, when they brought out dessert I decided the pork was better than the dessert and kept eating it. It was awesome. That's about it for this week. M's baptism is on the 28.That should be fun.