Fourth Quarter!

From our roof

Here we go ladies and gentlemen. We are on the final quarter of the mission! Kinda weird! It has gone really fast, almost too fast! But things will be good! I have really prepared myself to finish strong. I have seen a few people end their missions lazy, or some really badly, and I refuse to do the same thing! 

This always happens though. During the week I think of stories I want to write home, then I sit down and I forget everything. I am going to start keeping notes in the back of my planner to remember!

This week was good! We had Christmas and it was awesome to talk to my family and see their happy faces! It's weird because even though I haven't seen them in like 7 months (since the call on Mother's Day), it feels all too familiar to talk with them.

This week we went around talking to a lot of the members and reading with them the story of the birth of Christ, and really testifying of him. Something I found in my personal study that I really liked is the first three verses of Section 29 of the D&C. It is a personal invite from Christ for what we need to do! That is honestly how easy the gospel is! Follow Christ and do what he asks and you will be fine! I want you all to read that ;) It's not hard, it really is not, you just have to do it! 

We are still working hard to grow our inventory and get new investigators, but as of late we have not been able to sit down with many people. We are hoping this next week will be our break through week! 

Love you all a ton, and wish you a Happy New Year! 

Elder Naylor 

Family Night

Christmas

Our Area

I hate throwing up SO MUCH!!!

So have you ever been on a boat and it rocks so much you feel like your going to die!?! Yeah, BEEN THERE!!! I had to take a boat from Fogo to Praia. I threw up every 10 minutes of the four hour ride!!! Now I am sure you're asking yourself, "How did you still have food in your stomach?" Oh, I didn't!! It was all gone in the first 30 min! The rest of the time was just dry heaving... it left my body so weak!! I couldn't even hold myself up anymore. I just slumped in my seat and let the waves throw me around!! NOT FUN! Don't ever take the fast ferry!!

After I got off my worst nightmare, I crashed at the zone leaders house. I walked in the door, dropped my bag, then boom, out. They then wanted to go eat, so I thought, "Oh, your completely empty. Your body will like food!" Nope! I took one spoon full of rice and my body freaked out! It started to go numb and just be weird. Gratefully, that passed an hour later. Then I spent the night walking around with Elder Dos Santos while he said bye to recent converts (he was leaving as well). The next day they had their Christmas party. I got to see it two times! :) And president called me up to do the same musical number I did in Fogo!

Then I took a plane to Sao Nicalau! This place is sweet! First off, the airport is no more than a glorified tent! :) But the town is cool! The church here has 16 people, no leader, and 2 priesthood holders! We are the missionaries and the ward leadership here! This island was opened up one year ago and that's all! So we will work hard to make it grow! Elder Jensen is super cool! We get along great--probably better than most of my comps. It kinda stinks that he is going home in 3 weeks...I will miss him!

Excited for Christmas this week! Should be a lot of fun! :)

Love,

Elder Naylor

Leavin' on a jet plane! ...or a boat.

So I thought I was going to be transferred, and I will be going to the island of Sao Nicolao. After 8ish long months in Mosterios, I am gone! I am going to miss a lot of the members, and Paula and Guta, but they are in good hands! I will be serving with Elder Jensen. He is ending his mission here in three weeks. so there are only four elders on this island. My whole mission I have been in the areas that are super far away from other elders. I have the nickname of the exiled missionary... and the really weird part about this transfer is that iImight end my mission in this area...WHAT!! When did that happen!?!!  It should be a good one though. I am really excited to get a fresh start and end the mission strong!

Fun fact though. We actually got evacuated this last week (*Todd's mother would be very interested in hearing WHY...), so I don't have a ton to say about missionary work, other than we did have our Christmas party. (Mother, I think I finally have an idea of what it's like to spend hours in the kitchen... :/). That was super good! We were able to relax and really enjoy the spirit of Christmas. Sis. Mathews shared a part of her conversion story and talked about how the little drummer boy did not have much, but he gave to Christ the best he had. And she invited us to give our best. Many of us have very different skills and resources but Christ does not want us to bring someone else's talents, he wants ours. 

That's all I got for this week. Oh, but I did translate for the stake president here when he had a meeting with the area seventy about the volcano! So that was cool! Super excited for the Skype call! Talk to you here in a few! ;)

Love, 

Elder Naylor

Thoughts and prayers for those who have lost all--

This was a good week. We had a lot of good things happen. As always, people are still kind of on edge about this whole volcano thing. But nothing big has happened yet. The city that sits at the bottom has been completely destroyed. But no one has been hurt or injured. These people here need your prayers and your thoughts. Most of them have lost everything! 

In terms of our work, we have had some people make some progress. One is Anna and she really likes our church. She is just hard to teach because she switches the topic so much and will talk a lot. We also found a sweet new investigator, her name is Paula and she is super smart! In our second lesson we were talking about the plan of salvation. We finished talking about our pre earthlife, and she asked "So why don't we remember any of that?" No one has ever asked me that in my mission!! :) It made me super happy to have to explain that! :) 

She should be sweet for the future. The sad thing is that this will be my last week here. I was told last time I would leave and transfers are this Sunday. I will miss a lot of the people here, and wish I could have gotten some more people progressing or baptized, but I honestly feel that I have planted a lot of seeds. Some day someone is going to come through and have this place explode. 

Thats all for this week folks,

Love, 

Elder Naylor 

Thanksgiving!

Being Gargoyles

Ash on our home

Stuff

So to start off the week we did a lot of help with the people from the volcano, but as the week went on they needed us less and less, so we just went back to work. The most help they need is helping people down from cha das calderas, but our president said we can't go up there. Where we are is literately safe. We can see nothing here and smell nothing. 

We have Elder Olsen and Arteaga with us so we have been on divisions all week. The work has been going good! There are some people that have some potential! Will have more updates next week. Sorry! :)