Welcome to....

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 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 to snow so while everyone was raiding Walmart preparing for this huge storm, we were praying and hoping that our pack of water bottles would be enough to get us through. It did 😏 our heater only went out once and our house was about 50⁰, but God is good and helped us get it fixed and warm quickly!

We also had a really cool lesson this week with a lady named Gina Gandy. She is older and has a lot of challenges in her life. She's been taught by missionaries for quite a while now and believes everything, but she just hasn't been able to commit to baptism yet because she wants a direct "yes or no" from God. Well when we met with her I shared the conversion story of my Grandpa "Hotdog" and how he was looking for a direct answer from God too about his baptism and it never came. My grandpa moved forward in faith and got baptized and was then able to see all the blessings from it. At the end when we asked Gina how she was feeling about it again she said "I think I'm getting a yes from God" so that was super exciting! This week we will hopefully get her on date to be baptized soon! Keep her in your prayers!

Being locked in for a couple of days I have had a lot of time to study. The scriptures are awesome and there is so much to learn from them that sometimes I feel overwhelmed. This last week I really loved Alma 5. It was a good chance to take a step back and assess how I am doing in my life and see where I need to make some changes so that if I were to die tomorrow I would be prepared to meet my Father in Heaven. 

I hope that everyone's week was great and that you're all staying warm and healthy! Read your scriptures and say your prayers!

Con cariño,
Elder Holdstock





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