A Brief Summary...

Okay so to briefly summarize things so far. I am in the field. I am serving in the Kearns East Stake. We cover three wards and walk/ride bikes. My trainer and companion is Elder Bennett from North Carolina. My Mission President is President Chambers. There has been one baptism so far and we have four others on date as of right now. Also sorry for not emailing yesterday. Our P-day got switched to today because we are going to the Temple. The Oquirrh Temple. No idea how to spell that. Anyways, things have been awesome. I learn and grow each day. All of our investigators are doing well. I can't remember if I talked about Jeff last time, but he was on probation and stuff but still wanted to learn and things. Well he dropped us this week. It was really sad. He just wanted to focus on other things that needed to be resolved and stuff even though we told him the Gospel could help him with all that. I think there will come a time though where he realizes he needs it. We got a new investigator named Seth. He started coming to scouts and stuff and so we got the referral from the young mens leader. He's pretty golden. He's about 13 years old. Neralyz, a Spanish speaking 14 year old we are teaching is set to be baptized on the 26th. We had her set for the 12th but her mom felt she wasn't ready so she pushed it off. We were lucky to get her to agree to the 26th, she wanted to wait a couple months at first. Neralyz is awesome though and she understands things well. She's got a little bit of a learning disability but she has an awesome spirit! We teach her in English and her mother translates for us. We have all four baptisms planned for the 26th... no idea how that'll work out haha. Two were originally for the 12th but got pushed back. Gracie, brother Wimber's daughter only comes on the weekends and she didn't come this weekend so we didn't get a chance to teach her but she is really mature for her age and understands a lot. Brother Wimber has such a love for his family. He's still working on coming back to church himself and stuff but the fact that he so strongly wants his kids to get baptized and live good lives is awesome!

It's snowed a little bit on the mountain tops here and there but haven't seen any snow here on ground floor yet. Well, we had a little sleet one day but that was about it. After these next few days it's supposed to be a lot colder and getting into winter weather. We'll see how long I last ha. By the way, people honk at us as they drive past us you'd think we were missionaries serving in Salt Lake City South or something!! Haha they love the missionaries here. You don't get a chance to put your hand down because you are waving back at so many people. Haven't been attacked by any dogs yet, that's good. I owe my thanks to whoever invented fences. Or leashes for that matter. There is a pizza place around here that has these huge pizzas! The box was like 3 feet wide at least. We had interviews with the Mission President as a district so we bought one afterwards and we finished it. There were 8 of us and we all had at least like 3 or 4 pieces. I wish I would have had my camera there. I haven't taken too many pictures. I get to go to the temple after this though so I'll take some there :)

Time is flying by. Anyway I hope you all have a wonderful week! Love you -Elder McKinney

PS: Conference was awesome! I sincerely hope all the members were paying attention. You have no idea how much we rely on them. Especially here in Utah. If only I realized before my mission how much I should have been involved. Like I kind of realized but I didn't understand. We should be sharing the gospel at every given opportunity. But yeah I loved conference! My companion got to go to the Saturday Afternoon session. Not me though. I hung out with another set of missionaries. We could have taken an investigator though. We tried to take one but we couldn't get tickets in time. They were already gone. We can take investigators to Temple Square though! I haven't been able to do that yet but I really want to! -Love Elder McKinney