Hello everyone! It is almost Christmas!!! I hope everyone is in the Christmas spirit and focusing on the real reason for the season:) This was a busy week. I got to go on two different exchanges. One with with the Spanish Missionaries. But this time I had a spanish missionary here with me in my area. Then a couple days later we had one with the waterloo missionaries. The waterloo missionary has never been here yet on an exchange. So it was fun taking him around everywhere and giving him the East St. Louis experience. They loved it. I love it to because it is a nice switch up and to be with someone different for a change. During one of the exchanges we came up with a new idea. It is called Bridge Contacting. Since our branch boundaries reach out to the middle of the Mississippi river, we are allowed to walk half way across the bridges. There are multiple in our area. Most of them are freeways but there are some for walking too. We do not know if we will try it yet or not but it is just an idea.
Well we went to another funeral this week. The second one we have bent to since being here. This time it was for our investigators father. He died from drinking beer. He had some condition already and when he drinks it just kills him. He was an older man so things were not as tragic as the last one. But still very sad. Everything has been hitting the fan in this family. Satan has been working on them real hard because he knows they are working towards baptism. TJ was supposed to be baptized this sunday but now we are changing the day to either Saturday of this week or wednesday of next week. So please pray that it will happen. He really needs this in his life. We are making progress with a couple other investigators trying to help them to be baptized. We Challenged a couple more people but no one wants to commit to a date yet.
We are trying to convince the branch President to change the time of church from 10 to 11. The reason being is that everyone shows up to church way late. Everyone likes to stay up all night long then show up after sacrament meeting. This is the case for all of our investigators. They all like to stay up all night and show up late. It is irritating. We will get a bunch of investigators at church but no one will be at sacrament. Which is one of our key indicators. Yesterday some showed up for the last 10 mins of the last hour. Please pray that people will be at sacrament meeting.
We have heard rumors of them changing the branch boundaries again. The reason why they condensed the ward to a branch and gave half of the boundaries to other wards was because there was some racism going on with the African Americans and caucasians in the ward. All the caucasians people were running the ward with the African Americans not doing as much. So now the branch is mostly black making it so that all the African Americans have to step up to the plate and start taking responsibility and taking up callings. But many of them have not and the branch is really suffering. Even though many things are happening with investigators and we are baptizing it still has not been enough to support it. So there was something we heard is that the branch might totally be disintegrated to all the other wards that are surrounding. Please pray for the strength of this branch that it may be able to function correctly. It is going through a lot right now. We are starting to make an effort with getting the Hispanic group back.
We had a mini transfer because the group going home this transfer is going home a few week before it ends to be home for Christmas. So in this transfer the Spanish missionaries were moved to St. Charles because they just opened up a spanish branch there. So with our district leader leaving my comp was named the new district leader to finish out the transfer since he had been one many times before.
This week was the Mission Christmas party. It was a ton of fun! It was nice to see everyone again and play games, eat some food, and have a nice fireside. We had out branch Christmas party this week also. It was kind of funny that everyone came to the party and we had like 60 people there and then church the next day only 25 people were there. Well 20 of the people at the part were not even in the branch but still we had a ton of our investigators at the party but then it comes to church he next day hardly any of them show up.
Anyways I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas. Remember the reason for the Season. And have a spirit of giving not receiving:) I love you all.
Love,
Elder Derek Turner
*Serving in Zion*
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