Black Hole Year

Happy New Year!!

2018 has thus begun!!

In mission culture, the year that you spend entirely on your mission is known as your Black Hole year.  Today is the first day of my Black Hole Year.

I also hit my 6 month mark a few days ago.  I got to burn a tie as per tradition.  It was this horribly ugly tie that I found in Wrightwood on exchanges with Elder Noorlander during my first transfer at a yard sale.  It was silk, so we doused it in hand sanitizer so it would pseudo burn.  It just melted...  That didn't go as planned but it was still a fun evening.  We played Five Crowns with some other Elders and just had a good time.

We have an investigator named Nicole that the Elder's in this ward have been working with for a while. This past Sunday, in Gospel Principles we reflected on the past year and the things we learned. It was a spiritual experience for her and we both (Elder Dietrich and I) felt impressed to set an appointment immediately. She felt the spirit and we hope she was impressed to take action towards baptism.  It was an awesome Sunday all around.

Something happened last night.  Around 12:30 at night, Elder Dietrich and I had fallen asleep already when someone knocked on the door.  It was a few of our friends in the ward who just wanted to wish us a Happy New Year.  We didn't appreciate it at the time but in retrospect it was funny.  All their kids were hyped up on sugar drinks and staying up til midnight so they pranked themselves.

Elder Ellsworth

From a paper letter this week:

"The work hastens once again!" Yesterday, Thursday, we got 2 new investigators who committed to baptism.  We got a message referral for a family in our area and we immediately went out to meet them! We missed the mom and her 4 year old daughter asked if we were kids. "Yeah we're kids! Just really tall ones" Later when we came back and the mom was home the little girl said "The tall kids are back! What the heck!" We taught the restoration lesson and gave her a Book of Mormon which she gladly accepted the challenge to read it. She and her 17 year old daughter both accepted the commitment of baptism if they get a confirmation from the spirit.  

Tonight we saw something awesome! I have included a picture. We heard later that it was the SpaceEx rocket. It happened just as the sun set so it looked incredible. A whole portion of the sky was lit up by the burnt rocket fuel and there were two bright points like stars moving beneath the moon light. It was while were were out tracting.