We have a Date!!!!

Today at 12:23 PM

Hola (: 

This week was great!!! Ahhhh it's a great time to be a missionary (: The highlight of the week was that we set Alana with a baptismal date of February 15th! AHHHHHHHHHH! :D Finally! Then we actually found out that her parents wouldn't be home that day, so we are going to change it to the 16th, the Sunday afterwards. We are so excited! We were able to do so with the help of Elder Whited when he came to our area for exchanges of Saturday. Elder Whited was my first ZL back in Santa Maria, and now he is on his last transfer and he is my ZL again. We had an awesome exchange! But we are so happy for her and we are going to talk to her a lot about faith, because that is something she can definitely benefit from. I really enjoyed the exchange I had with Elder Whited. He really is so great! He is from Amarillo Texas (: 

Can you believe I hit my year mark in a few days?! I really can't!! That is so nuts to me.... time goes by quick. 

We were able to read some more chapters from the Book of Mormon with Ian. He is really good at understanding what is going on. It is so great! We usually only have to read chapters once and he gets it. We feel he is progressing in that manner. His health still causes him to stay home, but we are going to try to see if there is anyway to get him to church. 

We had a really cool miracle last night. So Elder Toa and Elder Horsley were stuck in their apartment due to Elder Horsley's knee. He injured it pretty badly, and he is unable to ride a bike. They needed about 7 declarations (which is just basically telling somebody a restored truth) for the week to meet standard of excellence (which is 20 per week), so they called us to see if we could go on splits with them that night to get their declarations, but we aready had a couple appointments set up. Well, we came to find out that the appointments we had fell through, so I went with Elder Toa to his area to get some declarations. Usually we don't see much success past 7:30 pm, especially with declarations cause most people arent' out at night, and they don't like it when we knock on their door super late, and we were going out at about 7:45 or 8. But we went out with faith and we were able to get 15 declarations together and 1 lesson to a non-member with a member pressent, all in about an hour period. It was a true miracle and we are definitely blessed for it.

During my studies this week, I studied a lot about the Atonement. It truly is amazing the depth of everything that it covers. I learned that His grace truly is sufficient to cover all of us. I love the Atonement and I have loved learning about it so much while I have been on my mission. Jesus Christ truly did so much for all of us, and I honestly feel the least I can do for Him is give 2 years of my life back to him. I love being on a mission! I love serving the Lord!  What an amazing opportunity (:
But yeah, I have seen the new video for the temple a couple times. It is sooooooo good! I saw it last time and when I went with Elder Spencer. I was really surprised when I heard that they made another one! I'm excited to see that one (: haha but I saw the old film many times, when I went with Bro. Leatham, and when I went with Hadyn (or Sis. Richardson) and I also saw it the time I went to the temple for my own b day. But I like the new one a lot better! It portrays everything so well (: But I hope all is going well! Know that you are always in my thoughts and prayers. Thank you for all that you do for me! Know that I am well and loving my life as a missionary (: have everybody write me a letter! 

Thank you so much for all that you do (: 

Elder Teeples