Thanksgiving/Greenie

Well this week was a blast! We left on Monday to start all the transfer stuff. We drove to Madison and got there and said goodbye to Elder Nielson. He is serving there now. But then we drove to Milwaukee for the night and stayed there until Tuesday about 2. I found out who my trainee is, his name is Elder Record! He is from Clearfield, and he is super cool! We get along really well! He played the cello in high school, so he is much more musically inclined than me. But we had a really good week! It has been a little bit stressful training. We have a lot of work to do, and we stayed really busy. So his 2nd full day here was Thanksgiving, and that is a super weird day as a missionary. We were with members almost the entire day. But we had a really good dinner at one of the members homes. It is a little different just being in a companionship, but it is fun. After our dinner on Thanksgiving we went to our ward mission leaders house for a little bit and his brother was there. It was a really good time! Thanksgiving was for sure the highlight of the week, but we started singing Christmas hymns in church so that was good too!

Spiritual Thought: This talk came up twice this week and I really enjoyed it the first time as well. It was Elder Holland's talk in this last conference titled "Be ye therefore perfect, eventually" If you don't remember it or haven't listened to it I strongly suggest it. He talks at the end of it about how we shouldn't judge how people are walking along the path. There might be a drunk man wavering in his journey home, but at least he is getting home. We are all stumbling and wavering in our own way, and as long as we are striving to get back to our Heavenly Father we will be just fine. It is a great talk all around! Listen to it! https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2017/10/be-ye-therefore-perfect-eventually?lang=eng

So everyone thinks Wisconsin should be really cold right now, and it is cold, but not that bad. Friday was super warm, it was like 60 I think. So it feels about the same as I remember Utah for now. I am sure it will get there, but no snow yet here! Thanks for all your support! Have a great week!

Elder Reynolds

Greenie Companion - Elder Jadon Record

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey everyone!

This week has been very eventful! We knew transfers were coming, and we were pretty sure that at least one of us was going to leave! So basically we were just waiting for Saturday to see who was leaving. Saturday morning we got the text that told us... I am the only one staying in Green Bay! Elder Thies is going to Milwaukee, it is called Parkway ward, it is the sketchy part of the mission! But he is really excited, and then Elder Nielson is going to a place called Richland Center and it is kinda close to Madison! It is a little sad that they are leaving, but I am even more excited for what is happening here in GB. I am getting a brand new missionary from the MTC! It will be super fun! And so we are driving down to Milwaukee tonight to pick him up in the morning! It is exciting times. I just barely finished being trained and now I am training! So we will see how that goes!

So before that this week, we went to institute. It is at the teachers house, and they live right on the shore of Green Bay, so it is a gorgeous house! And they fed us, and then invited us to stay for the class. We talked about ways to study the scriptures and that was really good stuff! I thought that the way I was studying was really good, and it is good, but the things we talked about at institute really helped. But then after institute we were invited to sing a couple disney songs just for fun, and that was super fun!! It sounds like it would be lame and not fun when I say it, but we jammed out to some Lion King and Frozen! The institute teacher, Sis. Seiber, is super good at the piano, so she plays and whoever wants to stay after and sing does that. So that was really fun!

Here is a spiritual thought for you.
In church yesterday our sacrament meeting had one of Pres. Uchtdorf's talks as the theme you could say. One of the speakers repeated his line "Faith always defeats fear" I really like this quote. When we have faith, we shouldn't be afraid of anything. It really helped me as I am getting ready to do something new. There is nothing I should be afraid of because I have faith in Jesus Christ, and he will help me no matter what I need and when I need it. He is always there!

Hope you all have a great week! I love you!

Elder Reynolds

Elder Bryce Reynolds.....swingin'

Tracting in the rain

Mission District

Mission District

Mission District

Cool looking leaf

funny name of a road we knocked

Sign we saw on a door - we didn't knock on this one.

Lunch one day with the ward mission leader

Big white thing on the burger is butter....super unhealthy

Snow has fallen!!

Well this week was pretty good! We did a whole lot of freezing! The high is usually in the 30's now, so that is pretty cold. On Saturday we woke up to the snow! It was really funny. One of my comps, Elder Thies, is from Arizona and he was excited and cold at the same time! We went and raked/shoveled/blew one of our investigators leaves for her that day. And Elder Thies couldn't stop playing in the snow, it was funny to watch! Elder Nielson finally started to admit that it is getting cold when the snow started to come. It was weird to be raking leaves in the snow, that was a first for me. It was just a light dusting that was mostly gone by Sunday morning, but it made the raking a lot harder!

Other than that the coolest things that happened this week was getting some referrals from headquarters. One of them is a part member family, and they were at church this week after we visited them! So I am excited about the family and them coming back to church or being baptized! We also have one that wanted a blessing, I think her brother contacted the church and asked us to help her, so we haven't been able to visit her face to face yet but have talked to her on the phone a couple times. It seems to be pretty promising!

The pictures this week are mostly from the snow day, but there are a couple others. One of them I was playing with the effects on my camera, and it made Elder Thies look really funny. We also got some really nice cheeses from one of them members, so there is some explanation on them! I can't wait to eat it!

Spiritual thought: This came from a talk in our sacrament meeting yesterday. "There is a difference between being worthy and having worth" I really liked that, because we should strive to be worthy, but no matter what we have done, God still loves us, and our worth doesn't change to him based on what we have done! So no matter what you do, remember that you are worth it to God, and that no one can change that, not even your own actions! He cares about you and loves you eternally!

Hope you all have an amazing week!
Elder Reynolds 

Halloween!!

Well first of all, Happy Halloween!! Almost a week ago now, but that's okay. This week was pretty normal for a week in the mission. For Halloween we were asked to treat it like a normal day until about 6 when it got dark. So we ended up having a lot of time at the end of the day, and we went to members homes. It was really fun! But we were knocking doors about 4:30, and we didn't think anyone would be trick or treating yet, so we were okay. But then this guy answers his door and the first thing he says is "You're a little old for trick or treating aren't you?" So at that point we decided it wasn't really worth it anymore! Haha it made for a good laugh. The rest of the week wasn't super eventful. We went on exchanges with the zone leaders so I was with Elder Van Orden again. It is fun to be around him again! It is starting to get cold enough that if we are outside no one wants to talk to us, so it makes campus and just talking to random people a lot harder. So we have been knocking quite a bit more than the last few weeks. We had interviews with President Williams on Wednesday. It is always really good to get to meet with him and get advice. He is an amazing man, and super smart. And then on Thursday we got to meet with one of our new investigators, his name is Rob. But he is super prepared! He came to us, so we didn't even really find him, he found us! He came to church this week and we will meet with him again this next week! I am excited for the work that happens here in Green Bay. We had the chance to go to a baptism this weekend for a guy that I taught a couple of times. He ended up living in the second ward, so they taught him the rest of the lessons but we got to go to his baptism on Saturday and that was really cool! Watching people make the changes in their lives brings so much joy into your life as well as theirs. So it was really cool.

Hope you all have a great week! Make time for your study of the scriptures! Especially the Book of Mormon! It is so important to get the time in them every day!

Elder Reynolds

Such an exciting day! Elder Bryce Reynolds  and Travis Heling

Exchanges with Elder Van Orden

Elders Reynolds,  Thies and  Nielson

A white squirrel....weird

A really old McDonald's sign