The White Witch

Hello all!

I'm pretty sure the White Witch visited Bay City this week - we had a couple of days with highs under 10 degrees. (Naturally, the days on which we had the most lessons cancel and the most door-to-door proselyting planned.) It's warmed up to a toasty 32 degrees today, though, so I'm hoping that cold spell is over. The Bay area gets less snow than the rest of Michigan, but we do get lots of wind and bitter, wet cold. Enough complaining.

Tuesday morning I went with Elder Morales and Elder Alder to Mt. Pleasant, where they boarded the transfer van for their new assignments in Lansing and Grand Rapids. Elder Patrick Taylor, my new companion, is from Kaysville, Utah; he graduated from Davis High in 2007. He has been out on a mission for a year this Wednesday. We started out the week with our district leader council, which went pretty well.

I'm really excited for our plans for the rest of the transfer. Elder Taylor is one of the most driven, dedicated missionaries I have ever met and I'm excited for him to whip me into shape! He is extremely focused on being his best self and I'm hoping that will rub off on me a little bit. We did a lot of planning this week, both for the zone and for our area and it should result in a lot more lessons taught and more baptisms too.

I can't think of any other stand-out news from the week. Jacob is still preparing for his baptism next Sunday and doing well. We did start teaching a really cool Lutheran woman who knows a lot of church members from work - both among her coworkers and her clients, who all live in Utah, Idaho, and California. Within the first ten minutes she asked, "but how do you know if Joseph Smith's story is true?" Music to my ears! Hopefully she'll enjoy what we left her to read in the Book of Mormon.

Love you all! Happy new year! I can't believe it's 2010!

Elder Joseph Cloward