Staying in Alliance Zone for another 6 weeks!

Looks Like you had fun in Cali!!  Ryan looks tall... I cant believe he is a senior either... That is so weird. This is the last year I don't have to go to school. :( I seriously cant believe I have been out 13 months... I hate the fact I have been here longer than I have left... oh well, progression I guess.

So I am staying here 1 more transfer! I am excited about it. I made it pretty clear to the assistants and president that I didn't want to leave haha.  I am excited for the transfer. At the end of this one I will have spent 11 months with the same people. It's so weird haha.  We had dinner with the Warner's last night. They are a cool family I have gotten really close with in the Alliance ward. They made me my favorite french toast since they thought I was leaving ha ha.  Everyone says this is the longest they have ever been around 1 missionary, but its all good, I really like the Alliance members.

This week was another awesome, busy one. On Saturday we went on exchanges with the other Elders in our ward and I spent the day on the PA side of the ward with Elder Read. He is a way solid missionary and we are pretty good friends so I was excited.  All the appointments canceled the whole day so we pretty much had nothing from 11 to 9.... It ended up being such an awesome day. We found like 4 new investigators. We were tracting on this one street and there was a lady smoking on the porch and we were walking up and she was like "I feel like I should be scared" we just told her who we are and stuff and she was like "well I am gonna stop you guys right there. I am Russian Orthodox and don't wanna talk" and all this stuff. I asked if we could sing her a song and she even said no to that haha!   It's like the first time ever I have been rejected when offering to sing!  We just kept talking to her and I don't even know what happened but she just all the sudden invited us to sit with her on the porch and she said she had one question. She said she didn't understand what the Holy Ghost was. We explained the Godhead to her and Elder Read told her about what the Holy Ghost was and then I just like bore testimony of what the Holy Ghost is and the feelings she was feeling were the Spirit and she just started crying and was like oh my gosh that was the most heartfelt thing I have ever heard anyone say. It was like amazing. But then she like got scared and was just like ah I don't know what I am feeling, we need to change the subject haha.  It was funny.  I don't understand why people are afraid of the spirit. They just freak out and don't understand how they could possibly feel good and not be drunk or smoking a cig. We taught her for like an hour and they are goin back tomorrow to teach her again. Then we stayed up till like 3 in the morning…. haha Sunday was a rough day staying awake.

We did get to go down to Alliance for the baptism. I seriously felt like it was my homecoming or something haha, it was so nice to see everyone again and stuff.  I talked to brother G for like 30 mins too.  He is going through a rough time with his kids. He has a 14 year old girl that's giving them so much trouble.  Her and I were friends when I was there and she listens to me so I figured she might listen to me if I had a talk with her haha.  Even like the little kids remembered me. The G's 5 year old came up to me right away and hugged my leg and told me I was her favorite Elder hahaha- I miss that place.

The baptism was awesome too!! Mary has come such a long way! It was so good to see all of them again. It was definitely an amazing week. Oh except for the fact East has bed bugs and I slept over there Saturday night and now we might have them… but other than that its been good!

So I am gonna tell you my frustration as of late. I am getting tired of so many peoples desires, but not following through on action. I meet so many people who like say they have strong testimonies and want to come to church and go to the temple and all this stuff but no one ever does anything about it! We can say we want to read our scriptures and go to church or whatever all we want, but it means nothing till we actually do something about it. There are just so many people that are less active in the church and in the gospel that are just lazy in their testimonies. I think it was president Kimball who said if people could see just seconds of Christ suffering for us they would crawl on their hands and knees to be at church to partake of the sacrament. It's so frustrating people--don't understand. I guess I didn't either for most of my life though haha.  Just go partake of the sacrament!

Well I hope you have an awesome week! I love and miss you!!

Elder Skalla