Happy Late Thanksgiving Y'all

Hey Y'all, 

I hope that each of you had a great Thanksgiving this year. It has been a good time here in the mission field. We had a feast at our church here with about 80 other people which was awesome. The food of course was fantastic. Hopefully it was just as great for all of you wherever you had Thanksgiving. 

The week went pretty well too. We started out on Tuesday doing some service with the Saint Pete Elders. This lady we met a few weeks ago is working on remodeling her house and had a pipe collapse so she had us come over to dig around it so the person coming to replace the pipe can do so easily. That went well for the first 50 feet. Then the fun began. In her backyard there are 2 giant trees probably planted when the house was made 50 or so years ago. They had grown over this pipe and there were giant roots everywhere. We worked really hard with our shovels around the outskirts of the tree digging up roots, but eventually we got right by the tree and a root at least 6 inches thick grew right on top of this pipe. At that time we used a Machete and an axe to get through that part of the root and that is about as far as we got. It was a fun and crazy time trying to uncover one 3 inch in diameter pipe. 

Then this week we found out that our friend Aloysius is moving to Nigeria. He was called back by his priest to come work for him there. We were able to see him one more time and asked if he would like the missionaries to visit him there, but his work will make it almost impossible to do so. We did get his email though and I am looking forward to keeping in touch with him in the future. 

Other than that it has been a pretty normal week. We had a lot of Good lessons with our friends. One of them named Gary asked us if we could help him quit smoking so I am excited to help him do that. In our mission we have a program that helps people stop smoking in a week. I have offered to multiple people, but none of them have done it so far. I am excited to see if this time I will get to help him stop smoking. 

A miracle that we saw yesterday is we were able to visit with a man named Brother Hankins yesterday. He is a less-active member of the ward who has had a really rough life this year. He has lost 2 close friends and had a heart attack. We were able to just be there for him to talk to us about it and I could tell that he was touched by our visit. I am glad that Heavenly Father was able to inspire us to visit him a few weeks ago and for the chance that we will have to keep strengthening him. He has not been practicing some of the basics which help in most of life's complex problems and so I hope I can help the Holy spirit prompt him to continue to pray and read the scriptures. I am hopeful that he will come back to church in the near future.

Well that is about it for this week. I hope that you enjoy the rest of your week President and hope this is a great Christmas season for you. Until next time Good luck and God Bless! 

Elder Beard