Come Back in January!

Feliz Navidad!

Well, we had a rough one in Smyrna this week. Yeah, this one was pretty hard. It started on Monday night. O, one of our investigators that had a baptismal date, who seemed so golden....dropped us. He told us that he'd been thinking and praying, and that he just didn't want to change his religion anymore. It was a sad start to the week. Then, throughout the week, we just couldn't meet with anyone. Hispanics take their vacations pretty seriously, so most everyone is out of town, and nearly everyone that we talk to tells us, "Come back in January."

Even though our tracting wasn't super successful this week, we found a couple new people through the church Christmas video initiative. One of those was G. She goes to an Adventist church right now, but she's open to learning more. The other is A. She's the first Hispanic that I've met that doesn't already go to a church, so hey, who knows.

Let's see. Other news from this week: we had our branch Christmas party on Saturday. A grand total of four people showed up (not counting us). We had the branch president's wife and two daughters (not the branch president though), as well as the first counselor of the branch presidency, Hermano M. There weren't many of us, so we all ate a ton of nachos. We watched the video "Joy to the World" in Spanish, which was pretty good.

Sunday was pretty good. After church, Hermano M drove us out to his house in Shelbyville for dinner. During dinner, we talked about how we've had to walk so much because Elder S left his bike back in Goodlettsville, and we are quickly running out of miles on our car. So, Hermano M was just like, "Hey, well let's go get your bike!" So he drove us to Goodlettsville, we got the bike, and then he drove us back to Murfreesboro where our car was, and then we drove back to Smyrna. Lots of driving.

My ponderizing scripture this week is 1 Timothy 2:5 which says, "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." During Christmas, we remember Christ's birth, but I remember that Christ was born to undergo the atonement. Because he suffered for us, he is our mediator with the Father. He bids the Father to welcome us back into His presence, and there is no other name given under heaven whereby man can be saved, except through Jesus Christ. Let us
remember why He was born during this Christmas season.

Love y’all! Have a very merry Feliz Navidad!

Elder Mitchell

They got more day-old goodies from a local store.

I guess I didn't need to worry about sending him goodies!

Getting some air!

They did a lot of walking!