Mary and Joseph where the only ones on that very first Christmas day

Oh me oh my. Calling home this week was awesome! I love my family so much. It was so great to be able to say next time I see you all will be in the airport! 

We had some awesome Lessons this week with some progressing investigators. Nene is getting baptized this Saturday!! So excited for her. She went through a pretty rough spot last week but she got the help she needed and is progressing rapidly towards baptism. We have had to cram all of the things she needs to learn in a pretty short amount of time. We taught all the lessons in about a week and a half. Good stuff. It was pretty cool to be able to do that because it's awesome to see how much the gospel relates to itself. The gospel of Jesus Christ makes sense!! 

We went caroling to some families last week and watched thier eyes light up as we sang to them. Some of the people we sang to it was their very first time carollers ever showed up at their house. Now, some have only been in the states for a few years but nonetheless! We were the first. 

A member also donated a bunch of toys and clothes to one of our refugee investigator families. So on Sunday we  brought all of these boxes over to them. They were so happy to see these huge boxes with their names on them! I love it. 

Bringing people happiness has brought me so much joy as I keep teaching and serving. I love my mission yall. 

Love yall! Merry Christmas!!! 

Love 

Reese 

Christmas deliveries!!

Caroling 

Here come Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus Lane

I honestly and truly cannot believe that Christmas is almost here. I remember a year ago when I was back in Clarksville with Elder Taylor. And now here I am with only 5 months left in the service of God. Time is truly an amazing thing. 

Earlier tonight we were walking down the highway, away from an apartment complex that our investigator Moise lives in. We had been trying to contact him but to no avail. To be honest, I am starting to feel the effects of being an older missionary. Tired all of the time. Even more than I used to be. Starting to not want to do the work anymore... You know. Just Satan working on me. As I was walking in front of Elder Stucki, I started to pray out loud, very quietly. But I just said, Father please help me get the drive and motivation, the will power to work hard. As I kept walking I looked up and said, I never realized that that apartment complex was here! So we began walking towards it. We get to it and a lot of lights are out in it. So I start to walk by it, then I said "Get over yourself Reese!!!" Out loud... Run up to the door and knock on it.  No escape now lol 

So by the end of the night we found 2 new investigators. We have been struggling to find any for the past few weeks. Pretty sure we will go back to that complex and finish tracting it out. God answers prayers. 

So the reason PDay is on monday is that on Wednesday we have Zone Conference. On Tuesday we are going to the Bishops Storehouse down in Goodlettsville TN to do service there. Last week there were about 70 orders filled out. I would Der how many are going to be done tomorrow with it being the week before Christmas. Should be fun! 

On Friday we messaged Nene on Facebook and asked her if she had been praying about baptism at all. She told us that she prays about it every day. She has been too stressed with school and other things to worry about baptism. But now that school is over we can help her work towards baptism. Hopefully she can be baptized before she goes up to BYUI on January 5th. Yes. A non member planning to go to BYU. She has been to church a bunch of times but now all she needs to do is be taught the lessons! Exciting stuff:) 

Love yall! 

Yo sé que Jesucristo vive

Love yall! 

Reese 

Elder Stucki drinking out of an "ALE" glass lol

The van says "Scrubs N more" that's basically our district. The elders are the scrubs the sisters are the n more! 

[Elder] It’s cold outside...

Yep, it’s definitely starting to get pretty chilly outside. Yesterday we went out tracting in the morning and it was like 32 with a wind chill of like 22... So that was no fun. I can take the cold! As long as there is no wind. We gonna be alright! 

We definitely had an interesting past week. Including visits to the ER, a member gave us a little Christmas tree, me beong sick.... Again, nativity festival. It was good! 

So I did not go to the ER. Elder Hamilton, a Spanish missionary who I live with, was biking and didn't see this little wall hiding behind a bush so he smashed his future between it and his bike peddal. We were all really surprised that he didn't break anything. Just a pretty bad bruise. 

We went and visited a member this week and they asked us if we had a Christmas tree. We told them that we had some lights pinned to the wall in a triangle to replicate a tree. So the mom went back I to the other room and she brought out a little boxed tree. She said that she was thinking about us the other day at the store and bought us this tree! It was awesome! 

So last week I told yall I had a cold. So, i tried pushing through it a for a few days but on Friday afternoon I was dying. I pushed all the way through till 9:00 but then I said fine! I'll rest. So I slept from 10:00 on Friday night, til about 8:00 the next morning, then fell back asleep around 10:30 AM, then had lunch at 1:00. Fell back asleep and woke up at like 5. Soooo I guess I really needed to let my body heal it's self. I did have a side affect though. I didn't fall asleep on Saturday night until about 2:30... So whatever. I'm good now! 10:30-6:30 sleep schedule is back in working order. 

The Nativity festival was so amazing!!! There were so many nativities there! They were from all over the world! There were probably over 100 different sets. I just got a package from Lexi this week that completed her nativity set she sent me last year and it is so adorable! Thank you so much lexi! I wish that I could have been able to place it on one of the tables during the festival but it's okay. I love it!! 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHRISTOPHER!!!!!!!!! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOUR 19!!!!! YOU'RE OLD!!!!!!!! 

That's about it for the week! In the Christmas season I think so much about my family. Even more than normal. I think back to setting up our Christmas tree. Last week dad send me an email talking about how he doesn't know how Noone has gotten hurt due to setting up the lights on our home. I think about going up to Gamie and Pa's house for Christmas day and being with the entire "Reese" family! (For those who don't know, my mom's last name was Reese before she got married) I think back to getting ready for Christmas break on da Aina. Back at BYUH. All the pretty lightsaround the Palm Trees. I love this Christmas season. Although, it is very hard as a missionary. But, because of what Christ did for me, because of the true meaning of Christmas, I will joyfully continue to serve, continue to work and preach the gospel, even if it means being away from home, family and friends for just one more holiday season. Christ means everything to me. Even though I know I'm not even close to being perfect, I hope  and pray that I can come somewhat close someday. 

Love yall 

Reese 

So we think there was a problem here 

This is the nativity festival! Only half of it. There was more behind me. 

Lexi sent this to me it's adorable 

O holy night, the stars were brightly shining

Thanksgiving was a really special day! As yall know Pdays were changed to Wednesdays, so we now have transfers the day after PDay, Thursday. So elder Hamblin left me, and is headed home and I received Elder Stucki! Pronounced Stücki. He is from just outside of Seattle Washington in a city called Renton. He sang in choir all throughout high school and loves Christmas. He has been pretty excited to be able to start listening to Christmas music. He keeps telling me about his flash drive that his mom is going to send him with a bunch of christmas music on it and I'm just like, Yo, I got apple music. Hahaha none the less he is stoked for Christmas. 

Its weird training again. If yall remember to 14 months ago I trained a new missionary. Lemme tell you what. It is 100% different types training now, being 18 moths in than it was only being out 3. It makes me understand how much you really learn as a missionary. It's also very humbling because it kinda forces me to slow down and look at things from a newbie perspective. I'm so very grateful that the Lord has trusted me to help another new missionary. I'm doing my best to help him become the best missionary he can be!

We had a rough week in regards to teaching people. We found a couple families to teach but it's so GOSH DANG HARD to teach these families because they "No hablo  the Ingles." I have noticed that there are a bunch of kids/teens who are getting baptized but are going inactive because the parents aren't. So we really need to find a way to get adults involved in the gospel more. What we are trying to find is a strong African family who will be active and will be willing to help us start/restart a Swahili/kinorwanda group. We are running into the problem that these families don't want to come to church because the don't understand a thing that happens. Not a word. Does anyone have suggestions? We've thought about giving them some translation headsets and playing a general conference talk but that kinda seems like lying. I don't know. HELP!! 

Thats just about it for the week! I CAN'T BELIEVE CHRIS IS WHITEWASH TRAINING!!! I saw that email from him on Sunday night and cried. I was so happy. I told some of the other missionaries and they were like "Next AP" Get ready Chris! 

Love yall! Have a great week! 

Love 

Reese 

I am a child of God and he has sent me here

It was completely unexpected for our pdays to change to Wednesday, so I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to write on Monday! This past week has been a little stressful with some logistical things like transfer calls and how we are supposed to get Elder Hamblin to the temple yesterday for his departing session. But! It was all figured out. It’s hard not knowing how things are going to work. But usually we end up throwing it all together and it works. Somehow....

So we have been having some really good lessons with some amazing people. Stiven, yes that’s how you spell his name, has come to church for the past 3 weeks! We are now trying to help him understand why baptism is so important. He told us that he needs to wait until he is 20. He is only 17. So that’s a little bit of a problem. But he said that if he gets his answer he will be baptized. 

We had a pretty cool lesson with him and all his brothers and sisters. We were talking about the song “I am a child of God” and Elder Hamblin said we can sing it for you right now! So we did. All the little “afrika watoto” (African children) stopped running around immediately. They all ran over and sat right next to us. Some of them wanted to words so that they could sing along. It was pretty cool. 

Moise is another kid that we are teaching a lot. He is 15 and has become a pretty good friend. His is from a very well to do family who works really hard. The parents know hardly any English. They speak Swahili and Kinorwanda, but moise speaks really good English. He has agreed to be baptized but hasn’t come to church. He also told his parents about baptism and they weren’t the happiest... so we want to have a lesson specifically focused towards the parents so that they can understand why the priesthood is so important. 

One more thing. Had to say goodbye to one of my best friends on the mission on Monday. Sis. McFarland. A day one homie from the good ol MTC Days. It was great Being able to see her pretty much every transfer for the past 18 months. I also had a great opportunity to be in her district for 2 of those one being her departing transfer. I'm gonna miss you! Good luck in the real world fam! 

I’m very excited for Thanksgiving tomorrow! Lots of good food is coming our way with a lot of thankful hearts as well. I’m am VERY excited for the #lighttheworld project coming out on Friday!! It should be a great time. The video this year is really great. 

Love y’all! 

Happy thanksgiving! 

Reese 

Oh Lord have Mercy on a country boy

This week has been a great week! We went out and have been finding and trying to talk to a bunch of different people who want to come to church. I found a quote from President stone from a MLC a few months ago, “Find people who want to come to church.” So we have been doing that. Trying to find people who want to come to church has made missionary work a whole lot easier. 

I don’t have a whole lot of time today because we went to Mammoth Cave! So I’ll send a bunch of pictures from that you won’t feel too lost from the mission lyfe. 

Love y’all! 

Reese

It don’t have to be miracles the fire’s within our soul

Progress is being made here in Bowling Green, KY!! This week we finally are getting our wheels turning! We were able to teach some great lessons to people. One of the kids name is Steven. He is an 18 year old kid from Uganda. He is very soft spoken and is kind of standoff ish. We found this out in previous lessons. So we decided on Friday to just go over there and get to know him. We went and talked with him for probably 30 minutes and he totally opened up to us. He told us about why he and his family came to the United States, we talked about sports he enjoyed playing, and he even invited us to a party he was having the next day. 

So we went to the party on Saturday for a little while, they fed us some amazing food. I can’t remember what the dish was called but it was African flatbread with some chicken... soooo good..... the flatbread was huge!! It was probably 18 inches across and 9 inches wide. So I tried to eat all of it. I just couldn’t. Could not do it! That was probably the most food I’ve eaten since last thanksgiving.... after we ate we invited Steven to church! He came to church and testimony meeting was perfect for him. There was a man who had just moved here from Utah. But he was originally from Africa. He asked a member to translate for him up at the pulpit. So as he spoke in Swahili, the members translated into English. The spirit was very strong. Steven listened and watched the whole time. It was awesome. 

We were also able to teach a few lessons with the sisters. They are still slowly giving us people to teach, so that’s pretty fun. I’m kinda, well pretty dang sad to see Sis. McFarland get ready to go home. If y’all don’t remember she and I were in the same district way back in the MTC together. We both just hit out 18 month mark on Saturday. Time on the mission just goes by so quick. 

Well I love this gospel. I love my Savior, Jesus Christ. I know the Book of Mormon is true. It will change your life. I promise you that as your read it, you will see a difference in your life. You will draw closer to God and Jesus Christ. 

This Tuesday, at 7:30 PM KY time, we will be giving a tour of our church building here in Bowling Green live on Facebook! So if you want to tune in and see a church building, and what some of the rooms are for, you are more than welcome to join in on the feed! 

Love y’all! 

Reese

Oh maybe someday, we'll figure all this out, try to put an end to all our doubt

I heard some Rob Thomas this week in Taco bell so I had to throw that in there. 

My friends and family. I would like to tell you something. It begins to get cold. Right now it is probably 32 degrees outside and will get colder as the night goes on. (Written on Sunday) We gave the car over to the sisters today so that was good. Therefore it is cold and we walk around in the cold. It's great! All of the people who we try and contact are not from here and are not used to the cold, so they don't come outside. Plus the world series going on, someone came to the door and said "not today! I'm trying to watch the world series!" I was like... Same. But I walk out here in the cold because I love the Lord. 

Oh just a reminder 

I hate the Dodgers. 

Moving on. 

We had an eventful week of trying to get out know the members better, teaching investigators and herding alpacas. On Saturday we contacted one of the coolest referrals I have contacted on my mission. They we so nice. They live a long way away but we decided it was worth the miles to try and drop in on them. The lady, Carla, was very happy to see us. She invited us in to with her family who was carving pumpkins. We taught the restoration and she and her kids asked plenty of questions. On of the sons has some struggles believing in a "Jesus Christ." He is a good kid. Having a knowledge of Jesus Christ will change his life. 

I love my mission!!!!!! I hit 18 months this week soooo...... BUCKLE UP FOR THE DOWN HILL RIDE!!!!!!!!!

Love yall! 

Reese

This is my new friend. 

17 months in the field selfie!

We had a Halloween party at church. We decided to be Nephi the ninja turtles. 

South Carolina Low Country is the music that comes out of me

Yet another week has gone and past and I still can’t believe how quickly it all goes. We had yet another pretty dang busy week. We are still trying to find investigators who the sisters gave to us. We are mostly going through and getting rid of people who don’t even live there anymore or dropping them because they aren’t interested. We are pretty much walking around everywhere we go because biking here is aweful. The roads are so thin and people drive like mad men... 

So I'm pretty sure I'm getting spoiled with having awesome youth to work with! The youth in this ward are awesome! I don't know all of them yet but I have such a good feeling. Yesterday one of the young men came up to us and said "How do you refer someone to you guys?" I was like, Who is it! Tell me! We will teach them! Pretty awesome. The bishop here is pretty cool too. He owns a hot air balloon!! He has a side business of flying that haha. I'm very excited to see where the work goes in this area.  

Our district is a party. We all live pretty close to each other so we always see each other and help each other out with rides so we are all getting pretty close. 

I'm trying to learn my testimony in Swahili right now. I just have it all written down its not all that long because I only have Google translate to help me out. It's such an interesting language. I've come to find that there are no words like "the" You just say the noun. So that's kinda interesting. 

On Saturday and Sunday there was a huge car show up near the corvette manufactur plant. Like there were thousands of suped up cars. From civics to Subie's and Genesis, so we drove around campus and looked at all of them. There were so many cops. People were racing up and down the streets all night long. Our apparent is right next to a main street that's pretty straight for a while so people were flying down that road all night. I've come to like cars a heck of a lot more on my mission than ever before. 

Anyway the church is true yall. Learn it. Live it. Love it. 

Love yall! 

Reese. 

"It's the thing!!!" Elder humbling

Take note at what's going on here. 

Same with this one 

Family pictures. 

He out 

More family pictures. 

Hakuna Matata! What a wonderful phrase!

So... Let's just say that this area is the most diverse area I've ever been in. We are teaching immigrants from everywhere. Literally. Congo, Kenya, Somalia, Burma, ect. So I'm trying so hard to learn some basic things in Swahili, Burmese, and kenyorowanda. Along with Spanish because we are living with the Spanish elder and we got to Spanish dinners with them and also Portuguese because some African countries speak Portuguese as well.... Soooo... Who knows anymore. I'm going to try and summon all my friends languages. Ready? Hannah Give me Portuguese--Derek give me spanish--And that's all I got. Anyone who speaks Swahili send it to me. 

This week has been absolutely nuts. There are so many people up here that we are trying to teach. Before we got there the sisters were trying to teach all of these people. So we now split the area with them and took about half of their investigators and we have about 50 new, progressing, potential and other investigators. And probably about 75 dropped investigators. So about 125 investigators were given to us. It's absolutely crazy. So I'm completely overwhelmed. I'm not going to sugar coat it. My mind is going to explode. So many people when I have to remember their names and stories and such. It will be fun. Plus we have about 600 people on role here with about 180 people in attendance.  Way to many. 

It's so much fun up here. It's like little Africa. I love it. I will get more accustomed to the area within the next few weeks. We have people who want to get baptized who get drunk on  the weekends and then others who don't want to get baptized, because they are earnestly trying to see what church is true. Some of them are so sweet. Some of the cutest kids ever. 

That's pretty much all I got for the week! I'm sure more stuff happened but my mind, it's about to explode.

Love yall! 

Reese

                                 We played Pakistani. Last one with the Franklin T-Stat district. I love em 

                   This is the Kropach family. We made Ti-Tye shirts. It's was cool. I'm gonna miss these kids. 

Try reading this. This is Swahili.