Elder Samuel Holdstock

  What's up everyone?!  This week has been a big grind. So many lessons fell through and the weather was not really in our favor haha but we're doing whatever we can to stay busy and optimistic. We also dropped like two-thirds of the people we were texting because it was getting nowhere. So we really hit the reset here and hopefully it will bring for more success this week! The thing that kept us really going this week was baptizing Gina! Saturday morning she was so excited that she came an hour early while Elder Mahoni and I were still getting everything ready. The whole day for her was special and I was so happy to be a part of her story.  Well that's all I've got time for today! The mission is a grind and we've got a lot of work to do. Hope you're all doing well! Love you all Elder Holdstock

  Hola Hola  This week has been wild! Kinda,,  First an update on our two friends Gina and Charlotte. Gina is so solid and has a such a strong testimony and we get to baptize her this Saturday! Elder Mahoni and I could not be more excited for her. Our other Friend Charlotte accepted a baptismal invitation on Tuesday and we put her on date for March 12th so that is also so exciting. Sadly I won't be there to see Charlotte get baptized because,.... I'm going to Bolivia on March 11th! Wow the day has come! I'm so excited and can't wait to get out there. I also know that there is still work to be done here in Salem, Indiana and you better believe I'm gonna be working up until the last minute.  This week we had an interesting dinner appointment with a member family. The family is awesome and everything was pretty normal, but then as we were about to leave them with a quick message, all of the sudden one of their boys pulled out a skunk from nowhere and put him in my arms...

  Hello everyone!! I hope everybody is surviving and doing well! This last almost 2 weeks has been a wild ride! I finished the MTC and got all packed up to head to Kentucky and when I got there they sent me as far away from Kentucky as they could get me hahah! So right now I'm serving in Salem, Indiana which happens to be kind of the joke of the mission. They call it "the Slum," but I think it's awesome! It's a pretty old town and it's also pretty small with several little farming neighborhoods really spread out. Luckily we have a car because biking to those areas would take forever! The day I arrived to Indiana it was a warm 60⁰ and everything was nice. That all quickly flipped around because the next day we were told that we couldn't leave the house for the next 2 days because we were about to be hit with the "ice storm of the century!" My companion, Elder Mohoni, is from Hawaii and didn't know what that meant and I'm really only used t...