Elder McKinney's Mission: Transfers! (and pictures!)

Transfers were this Wednesday. Everyone knew Elder Bennett was going to be made district leader. That made me excited because I would get a car and wouldn't have to walk in the snow. Transfer calls came, I was going to stay in the area and Elder Bennett was going to be a district leader in Herriman. So I was super disappointed that I didn't get a car. I was also hoping to spend all of my training with one companion, but oh well. My new companion is Elder Cleveland. He is from Maryland and has been out for just over 7 months. He and Elder Bennett just switched places. So this week has been good. Monday night we had a lesson with Denny and Rheanan. I honestly can't remember what I've told you about Rheanan but we set up to go to temple square with her on Thursday. We can take investigators and have the sisters there give them a tour and then we have a lesson at the end. We never went my whole first transfer so I was excited to finally be able to go. Thursday morning we got a text saying she got called into work and couldn't go -_- totally ruined everything ha. We hadn't made any backup plans for that time either so we had like three hours now with nothing planned. It all went well though. We worked and filled in the time. She said she still wants to go so we will see if we can't find another time to go.

Jake is still out of town working and his wife didn't want us to come by and meet with the rest of the family when he wasn't there so we haven't seen them recently. We put Denny on date for December 7th and he came to church this Sunday! It was super awesome! Stayed for all three hours. The only thing I think we have to worry about is his smoking now. We were tracting in the apartments the other day and we found a woman who had questions so we taught her for a few minutes and set up a return appointment. She has some serious potential so we are excited. We also ran into a man who had met with missionaries before but was on his way to work so we set up an appointment for tonight. We went and looked in the area book at his teaching record and apparently he is suicidal and the old mission president and his doctor said not to go back by for at least a year to kind of let him settle down.... it's only been five months. So we are going to be very careful tonight when we go. We aren't really going to try to teach anything, just assess the situation and stuff. We will try to talk to President Chambers as well to see what we should do. That's really all I have to report on the work here. Oh Seth, we put him back on date for the 23rd of this month but he missed church yet again! So he's off date once more. He was throwing up and stuff. Bummer. But yeah that's basically what's going on right now.

We went to a fireside last night where a man came and spoke who has worked with the building of temples and the conference center. He had some really awesome stories! After what he told us about the conference center, I'm afraid to go sit in there now because of what is over my head. After some of the things he told us, you know that the temple building work is inspired. For instance, for the Washington D.C. temple they had four different firms draw up what it should look like and he had three of the original pictures that looked practically identical. The firms were told not to talk to or correlate with one another. These are inspired buildings no doubt about it. So that was pretty awesome to go to. The weather this week has been really nice actually. Haven't had to use my coat or anything. Haven't had snow for a week either. So things are going well. I'll send a few more emails with pictures. I can only attach one at a time it seems. Hope you all have a wonderful week!

-Elder McKinney

p.s. in this picture it is our district and two zone leaders right before transfers. So the two in the middle in the back are our zone leaders (who are still here) My old companion Elder Bennett is in the back on the far left. The middle in the front is Elder O'Dair our district leader and the Solomons on the right side. The other elders include Elders Curtis, Young, Langbata, Mansfield, and Morenda. Elder Birch and Elder Johnston are our zone leaders.