Quick one!

Hey Yall!

So sorry this is gonna be super short but im doin great here!

Just some highlights!

Transfers and now here in New Albany. Its a branch. The people are great. We dont have any investigators. We are gonna start buildin it up into a ward baby!  This is me and Elder Black, and no dad he is not black! haha;) and our branch building!

Got to go back to t town to see natalie get baptized by her dad lee! He has been less active and there family has had a really hard last couple years. This day was so great for them. There grandpa in the picture was in tears tryin to thank me.  Lorianna, is her older sister and then her grandpa and me and Elder Hullinger:) What a great family! They are amazin! Im so happy i could be an assistant with the Lord in bringin about this miracle!

I got to go golfin for the first time in almost 2 years. Loved it! Did ok haha but great to be outside!  We got to go golfin with the Elder Ellison and our branch president yesterday! Dont we look Professional?:)

We had district meetin this week and have a new culture. We need to get up each mornin and put on our SHOES!:)

• S acrifice
• H appy
• O bedient
• E nthusiastic
• S elfless

Remember without shoes your feet would be really cold ahhah

Love yall so much! Have a great week and be happy:)

Love Elder Hall:)

New Albany!

Hey yall!

So Im now in New Albany Mississppi:) yesterday we had a great time at transfers and I got to see a ton of my old friends! My new comp is Elder Black. Elder Galorath, my trainer, trained him one transfer, so now i will be follow up trainin him haah we will see who does a bettter job me or my trianer at trainin him;) hhah We drove back to our area with the Elliasons and boy do they have a nice apt! haha probably the best in the mission:) We live in a house thats super messy but today we did some cleanin and will continue til its clean haha for whatever reason i cant stand dirty apts anymore i used to just deal with it, now i have to have it clean.

Our apt address is 813 Grandview Dr, New Albany, Ms, 38652. If ya wanna write just send them to that address now:) Haha its a lot different then my last area but im back in Mississippi now:) haha cant wait to have a great transfer ahead:)

Love yall!

Love Elder Hall

Whatta week!

Hey Yall!

So this week has been great! Well every week is great! But this week for whatever reason has gone by super fast, but everythin that happened seemed like its been years since it happened haha. Its been snowin this week and now its back up in the 60's, we've had rain and beautiful sunshine and weather all around haha nothin to much though has changed this week except one thing. That is that we got transfer calls and I will be leavin t town. Im really sad that i have to go, but at the same time i figured out where i will be goin and i cant wait to go there. I will be goin to New Albany Mississippi! Thats about 30-45 mintues south of my 1st area Corinth! Plus that is where is Ellisons are servin right now, so i will be servin with them and will be there district leader for about a month! I cant wait:)

On to this weeks events, so Monday and Tuesday were both crazy days! Monday we had our p-day but we were tryin to get Charles Minchew's baptism interview done as well, which the weather and Charles work were causin to much havoc!! We werent sure if it was gonna happen, but i knew that Satan was the cause of all this and i wasnt gonna let him win! He may have won a few battles, scratched, bit me a couple times, and also may have pushed me in the mud, but i got up and each situation that came up we were able to resolve it. I had to talk with our Heavenly Father and Coach Christ a couple times, but they gave us the pointers that we needed and they also helped with the weather! We were able to get Charles interviewed Tuesday mornin and baptized Tuesday night! We won the War!! Charles bore his testimony right after he was baptized and it was great. He could not stop smilin and you could tell that he had been prepared his whole life for this one moment! What a great experience we were able to be apart of:)

So then we had to go to Birmingham for a Dr apt for Elder Hullinger, Sister Hanks came and met up with us and wanted to take us out to eat. Well we went to Red Lobster for the first time for me and Elder Hullinger, I had some cat fish, my first cat fish of the mission and it was great! I also had like half of elder hullingers plate because he didnt like it, he had lobsters tail, shrimp and scallops haha and then Sister Hanks couldnt finish all her meal so she gave the rest of it to me it was Fettuccine with shrimp ahah it was all great:) Im tryin to like sea food now because i used to never even look at it haha

Just one more quick story. So on Valentines Day, we had a couple things we did in the mornin and early afternoon but after that we didnt have anything for the rest of the night. So we walked to different stores and talked with people and handed out the valentines day candy my mom sent me. Well we walked a couple miles down the road. It was startin to get late, so we decided to head back. It was gonna start rainin and my comp was exhausted and kept complainin and i just wanted to have a good night. Haha well what i did is just said a little prayer while we were at Wal Mart the last store we were at. I asked if Heavenly Father would send a member of our ward in our path so we could get a ride home that way i would get my comp happy, i would be happy and we would have a good night. Well we started walkin and it took about 20 minutes and then a car pulled over and a man said, "Hey you mormons wanna ride?" We said yes and got in. I had never seen the guy before. He was younger in his late 20's. But turns out he was from virginia and lived in Mississippi and was just up in T town to give a lap top to a friend. But he knew a lot of different mormons. He was Agnostic but took a Book of Mormon that we gave him and loved our message. Im glad we got to meet him!:) This is what we did with all the stuff mom sent for valentines day haha we tried to have a candle light dinner but we cant have fire haha so we just sat in the dark.....

On Saturday I got to baptize the daughter of a recent convert that the sisters taught! Her name is Kyla and she is 8. She was really scared of the water but everthing turned out great! Great things are happenin here in North Port now!  So the sisters taught a lady named renee and baptized her in Dec, well this is her daughter Kyla who is 8 years old that got baptized on Sat:)

Well last thought. We had a district meetin on Tuesday and I trained again on bein a Good Shepard. But also I learned somethin new about John 21. The story where the disciples go back to fishin and Christ is walkin along the shore and asks "Peter do you love me?" Well right before that when they all come in, Christ asks them to gather up all the fish in the nets, then once they bring them to the shore thats when Christ asks peter. Well as i read it that time, I imagined Peter holdin the fish nets, while Christ asks him "Do you love me, more then these?" Then i related it to me and our lives. What sins or trials or bad habbits are we holdin onto while we keep tellin Christ we love him? Peter answered him 3 times that he loves Christ but still had the fish and the nets in his hands. We need to drop our nets full of fish (Sin, temptation, bad habbits) and follow Christ! What are we wilin to give up? Just so things to think about:) Hope yall have a great week! I love ya so much! Hope ya had a great Valentines day! Remember to be happy and drop the nets!:)

Love Elder Hall:)

Life is great isnt it??

Hey Yall!

So I cant really think of anythin but how great life is. I know we have your down days and hard trials but just think, if we didnt have those we would not and could not have those days full of joy and happy and gladness right? Down here its been really cold lately! It snowed agian this week, but it was just a little drift of snow nothin to bad. We are supposed to have some bad weather this week so well see what happens! haha

Haha so im pretty sure this is definatly not mission approved hair cut but the lady didnt know that and by time i figured it out it was way to late hhaa:) This week has been great though! On monday, we were able to go over to a less active mans house, his name is Lee. Now he has been through alot, but he keeps makin excuses for not comin back to church. Well he has this girl friend thats a member, an she is helpin him alot! He asked us how he could get married in the temple! Well its gonna take a little bit because he doesnt even have the Melchizedek priesthood haha but we gotta start somewhere! So Im so excited about that. But even to make better, he has a daughter, Natalie, who is 10. Well we found out she hasnt gotten baptized, and i asked her if she would want to? She said yes! So her date is for Feb 22nd, and Lee her father would be able to baptize her!! Which would be so dang awesome because that would help them both out! We were able to get Lee to talk with the bishop on Sunday and we have everythin set an ready to go! So the next couple weeks we will be teachin both of them the lessons:)

We've been able to do a ton of service for the red cross, pine valley retirement, and a lot of other places, which is great cuz i love service:) haha Also we had zone conference! It was so dang good! One of the things i learned from it that applys to missionary work and life in general is you cant just do all of one thing. In missionary work we have to balance with findin, less actives, member work, service and other things. That way youll get more results than just tryin to focus on one thing and usin all your time for that. We need a well balanced life! '

Well this one is kinda short, but this week we have Charles baptism scheduled for Tue the 11th! Also we will start teachin Mike again since he has been outta town. Things are great! Love bein a missionary. You can find no greater joy and happiness then sharin the joy and happiness you already have!:) Hope yall have a great week. Remember to be happy!

Love Elder Hall:)

The Day After Tomorrow.....

Hey Yall,

I dont even know where to start! Well i guess well go with what Alabama has been callin a state crisis! One which they had to call in the National Guard, im still tryin to figure out what that would do. But this is as my title says, The Day After Tomorrow! It all started out as a nice cloudy day, the air was crisp an everythin was silent. We got up and got ready for an apt at 9 in the AM. We walked to the door, said a prayer and opened the door. My comp was still lookin at me as I screamed, "SNOW!!!" hahah it was really just little flakes that were gently fallin from the sky as harmless as a baby bumblebee. Man has this been such an eventful week! Here is Dooms day in Bama:) 

So as we are walkin along to go get the car from the sisters, we are takin pics and videos of the Bama snow. All was fun and games at that point. What we really didnt realize at that time is how bad things would get..... We went over to the church and had an apt with an investigator. (I will tell ya a little about that later). Then as we came outta the chapel, we looked outside and it was a winter wonderland! The snow was stickin and boy was there a lot of it! Well as we made our way back home we got to experience the ciaos, crazy, dont know how to drive in snow Alabama Natives. Haha well it snowed for a few hours that day, and everything started to shut down. There were crashes, over 2000 cars that got ran off the side of the freeway all throughout Alabama. People in Birmingham were stuck in traffic and most just abandoned there cars and left them there. Everything was shut down, as we walked down the main highway later that evenin it was a ghost town. Really the only store we found that was open was Hobby Lobby. As we walked in the only worker there said, "No we dont have any milk, bread, or eggs!" hahaha just jokin around with us. But everyone was freakin out and lost control. I will give them one thing though. The cars here are not meant for snow at all. Especially the tires and brakes! They dont work at all! But other than that at least everythin in Northport shut down for 2 or so days! It was crazy i couldnt believe it! So thats a little run down of the crisis that happened here in Alabama. The scary thing is that there is expected to be a bigger storm to roll through here in the next couple of weeks. Haha lets hope we make it through this one. One cool thing is a lot of people were sayin that this is the most snow they seen in there entire life! Just dont tell anyone I was the one prayin for it to come. I might have an angry mob come after me;)

Here is me tryin to look like a new missionary with all the new dress codes and what not...  The next cool story really quick is that of a new investigator I forgot to mention last week. The single adult rep in our ward has been on fire with missionary work here recently and she asked a man she came into contact with to come to church. His name is Charles, he is single and has a son and daughter, his mom went to tons of churches so he has been baptized many times, but says he feels the spirit so strongly in our church! Well we got talking with him and wanted to teach him on Tuesday. Thats the apt we had when it started to snow. Well we taught him with a member, and at the end set a baptism date for him for Feb 18th!!! Then yesterday he came to church again, he loves it and says he never wants to leave haha. The only problem we were havin is that his home is down Meridian Mississippi. He works up here in Bessemer and is a truck driver. He is only down there one day a week to see his daughter. But with his home down there we would most likely have to baptize him down there. Well throughout the week we found out that him and the single adult rep, April started datin haha which isnt bad, just a tad awkward. But we also talked with him and he said that he can only attend our ward on Sundays because he cant be down in Mississippi til Tuesdays anyway. Well we basically got it cleared to baptize him here. Also we taught him yesterday after church! We went over the Plan of Salvation and Word of Wisdom. He loved both of them and really everything is clickin in his head. All day Sunday I was listenin to the spirit to see if we should push his date up. We came to the conclusion that he is ready so now his date is for Feb 11th!!!! I cant wait:) Its so cool to see the Lord and how he really does prepare people!

This week I also conducted 2 interviews for baptisms. In our district this next week we are gonna have 4 baptisms! Its so cool to see this many! Ive never in my mission seen so many baptisms all at once in different areas! We also got to meet a referal named Stan. He is a little different, but that doenst matter. He loves what we taught him about the restoration and were gonna teach him again in a few weeks! Its crazy to watch an area go from absolutly nothin and start to boom with investigators and baptisms. Most of it is the Lord and the members. They are a lot more involved in missionary work and love to help now! Almost all our lessons are with a member!  Heres my shoulder bad, murse, whatever yall wanna call it:)

This is a dinner i made the other night for a few missionaries. I was pretty darn impressed with myself for makin all this alone! 

The last thing real quick was a special conference we had with L Tom Perry. It was for all the stakes down in the southeast region. Elder Perry talked alot of hastening the work and how members really do need to get involved. How we need to constantly be lookin and openin our mouths! It was great! I know that we can do this by doin one simple thing that Elder Perry taught and its something ive been studyin a lot this week. Its an act of faith, which is prayer. As we pray for missionary opportunities sincerely we really will get them. That should be in every single one of our prayers. As we do that we show Heavenly Father how much we really do want to work and find those that need the gospel. I have seen so much in missionary work how prayer really does work! There have been times when I pray all the time, by myself, with comps, and in every lesson. The work goes so much better. When i dont pray its a lot harder to find people, to feel the spirit and be prompted. Now as we pray we need to be lookin for the opportunities. We need to help Heavenly Father out and act on our prayers. He will answer us! A short quote, "Our prayers answered are faith promoting, our prayers unanswered are faith perfecting!"

I love yall so much! Have a blessed week! Remember to be happy in such a great time:)

Love Elder Hall:)