Haha just kidding. Here's what happened.

Hello everyone! I hope y'all had a wonderful Christmas on Friday! Our
week was pretty awesome!
Monday we got together with the other elders and went to Beale Street.
It was raining a little bit, but it wasn't too bad. We also went to
Riverside Park, which as you might think is alongside the river. It's
a really cool park, and we got some sweet pictures. I'll send them.
After that we stopped really quick at the Brown's house, since they
were on vacation and needed us to feed their hedgehog. (I know, a
hedgehog! It's sweet!) Then we chauffeured the other elders to their
place.

Tuesday we had district meeting. It went pretty well. I got the new
sisters in the district their funny Christmas socks (the narwhal with
a Santa hat was my favorite) which they liked. Then we went to lunch
with the other elders to Gallo Giro, and a random member there paid
for our meal. Thanks! We spent the rest of the day finding people. We
found a few cool ones too, which was great! We had our usual dinner at
the Hs and then ran down to the Cs to visit them. It
was a pretty good visit, and we committed them to read the Book of
Mormon cover to cover in the coming year. The mom thinks she can
finish in 4 months. The race is on haha.

Wednesday was the same as Tuesday, except we did more finding. It was
still good though, we found a ton! All in all, I think we only gave
out 100 or 150 cards, but it was worth it. We are booked solid this
week! But yeah, it was literally all we did. It was raining in the
afternoon, so we made a lot of cookies and brownies for the members
and investigators. Thanks to Sis. H for giving the district
supplies for that!

Christmas Eve was just another day for us! We did more finding in the
day, and went to the Cs for dinner at their place. It was super
good, and they refused to stop feeding us. We were sooo full haha.
After that we went out with A to go give out the cookies to
everyone. They were well appreciated, and we had one leftover plate to give
to his family. Then we went up north to give some to the Rs, and
we found out THEY HAD THEIR BABY!!!! They had her Tuesday. Her name
is L, and she is ADORABLE. I don't have any pictures (we didn't
know it happened so we didn't have cameras) but I will work on it. So
that was a lovely surprise to end our night!

Then came CHRISTMAS!! Thanks to everyone for all the gifts I got. A
lot of them were edible, which was greatly appreciated by both me and
Elder Peterson. :P We also got matching sock ties for ourselves, which
look super cool. After opening all the presents, we went to the D's
house to Skype! It was great to see my family one last time before
actually seeing them in person! 29 days are going to FLY by. They
already have been, really. Scaring me to death. Anyway. I did that,
then watched Mr. Krueger's Christmas and Music and the Spoken Word
with the Ds while my companion talked to his folks. After that we
went to the Ps' house for dinner, which was delicious. We watched a
Nativity movie with their family and watched them open presents.

Saturday it was "back to the grind" for us! It was almost 80 degrees
outside, which wasn't the coolest thing (obviously) but we made do. We
finally got to visit the Rs again. I had missed them a lot!
After that we had the first of all the appointments we had been
setting through the week. It went about as well as we had hoped! Some
of the people were not home, but we got to teach some others, and they
seem to be very interested!  That was about all we did that day.

Sunday was good too. Sister R's family had come out to see her
baby, and they all sang in sacrament meeting. They did a great job!
Apparently her dad sang in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for several
years. If that's any indication of how they sang. We also got our
Christmas present from Bro. B, which consisted of a tie, a
razor, and nail clippers. I love that man. :) After church, we went
right back to it! We met some super awesome people and had great
lessons with them. I hope what we taught sticks with them.

Well, that was about it! I hope y'all have a wonderful New Year's and
I will see you soon!
Love, Elder Reay
Pic: Pro panorama on the Mississippi!

This week in 7 seconds

Ho-ho-ho man, that was fast!

🎅🏿🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!!!!!!!!!
That being said, hello! It's been a crazy week filled with happy, sad,
funny, and just plain nice moments. I can't believe it's been a year
since last Christmas! It's freaking me out! But anyway, here was my
week:

Monday I spent the morning with Elder Moore and Elder Jorgensen, since
my companion got his turn to go to the temple. Both of them (Elders
Moore and Jorgensen) got the transfer call, so they were packing and
such. Then we went to the mall with Salazar and Spencer, mainly to
just meet up. Then we picked up Peterson and went to Steak N' Shake
one last time together. Our waitress was sad to hear they were
leaving. Then we all left for the church building to meet the sisters.
They didn't end up coming for a few hours, so we played chair soccer
with the other guys. Then they came and we all played chair soccer.
Their ride ended up being super late too, and since they couldn't be
alone in the church building, we had to wait with them for a while. We
played baseball with a hacky sack and a flip flop and other assorted
boredom games and then they just agreed to wait outside. That was
about  it for our day. Oh! Elder Jorgensen got this game from his mom.
It was a bunch of chocolate dipped caramels with fancy flavors that
you had to guess. I didn't do great (66%) but hey, free fancy candy.
My kind of game. :P

Tuesday was about the same. We were on bike week, and we realized when
we tried to bike to the other guys for a ride that our bikes were
still at the R's house. So we stayed closer to home. We helped
the other guys clean their apartment in prep for the new people. We
had the theory that it would be sisters, based on our counts, so we
had to clean extra hard. We had dinner at the H's and then
went to go see some people. We met a really cool family and taught
them, then we went to go see A. and L. They got a new dog,
who was extremely happy to see us.

Wednesday was transfers, and as usual there were surprises! So, here
is our new district: Elder Peterson and I in East, Elder Salazar and
Elder Spencer in South, Sister Brown and Sister Bennett (woo she's
over here now!) in Horn Lake and Sister Reed and Sister Madsen in the
NEW South area. So, Memphis North is now closed, and we are the only
Spanish from here to Jackson, TN. Elder Jorgensen is opening that area
with Elder Meza. Elder Moore went to Russellville with.... the OTHER
Elder Moore! My son is now with Elder Peterson's son, and both of them
have the exact same name. It's great. So that happened. Also, since
some areas closed, we got a car! So, with that, we immediately
proceeded to ransack the now abandoned North apartment. Elder
Jorgensen had left a lot of the food his family sent him since he
didn't have room. Now ours. They also have really good mattresses.
Also ours. Good office chairs too. Ours. In essence, we are now
stocked for the month with some really good stuff. Thanks guys! :P
After we finished our pillaging, we went teaching. We got to go see
the O. family with Sister Hunt and Abel, one of the youth in the
branch. It was really good!

Thursday we continued the Sacking of the Northern Territory. We got a
lot of good stuff from there. Then we started integrating the plan
Elder Peterson had come up with. You see, we have about 700 of last
year's Christmas pass along cards that they didn't end up using (who
knows why) and we decided that since they had the same website on the
back, they were still good. So we set the goal of giving out all of
them before Christmas. I'm not sure what we got ourselves into, but so
far so good! No, we haven't given out as much as we thought, but we
have met some pretty cool people doing it!  It was also a good day
because it got cold and I could wear my coat. :)

Friday was really cool! We got together as a zone to go spend the day
working for Toys for Tots! It was a blast. Totally doing that next
year. We were there for 5 hours sorting toys and "shopping" for the
people that were coming the next day. It was exhausting, but great.
After that we did more Christmas blitzing and found more people. Then
Elder Heaton and Elder Doty came over from Little Rock for a sealing
the next day and spent the night with us.

Saturday was more service. We helped out a member's family clean out
their house. They'd  had a small chicken fire (that's not autocorrect,
they accidentally left one cooking for about 6 hours and it
incinerated) and it had smelled like it for weeks. So, we got a deep
clean organized and took everything out, washed the walls and
everything, and put it back. And that was all before noon! Then we
dropped Elder Heaton off at the temple so he could go. I talked with
B. from Jonesboro in the waiting room (SO weird, I
Skyped for Christmas at their place LAST year 0.o). Then we got taken
out to eat by one of the families from Little Rock. The ex-elder
Ramirez came too! It was nice to see him again and get an update on
all the missionaries. Then we went out teaching for about half an hour
with the zone leaders before heading down to the church for our
interviews with President Wakolo. It went really well! I always like
meeting with him. We found out when we got there that they were having
a farewell party for J.T., who is going on a mission to
Kennewick Washington in a couple weeks. President Wakolo stayed for a
while and ate with his family, which was pretty cool!

Oh haha so funny conversation when he was talking to the entire district:
Elder Spencer: yeah, we've been eating a lot of tamales lately.
Pres: Oh, that is really good. It's not an avocado, but it's close, right?
Everybody: .....uhh.... What?
Pres: Isn't it green, you mash it up.......?
Everybody: oh, guacamole, President. That's actually avocado too.
President: Ah, I see. Well. (Points to Sister Madsen) What is a... Tamale?

Haha it was great. We are slowly converting him though.

Sunday was pretty good too! I gave a talk with about an hour of prep
for it since someone got sick. Haha that was an interesting
experience. It was alright though. We were there for a while planning
for the week, but later that night we went out with President Perez to
go see the P. family. It was pretty good. I really hope they come
to church this week though.

Well, hope y'all have a fantastic Christmas! I'll see a few of you
friday, but as for the rest of you, I hope you have a good one!
Remember the Savior and everything He did.
It's cheesy but He is the reason for the season. All of the seasons,
really. And everything else haha! Bye! Love you lots!

Pics: Didn't take too many this week, but here is a picture of the
sealing, with the Little Rock people!

I picked out my gravesite today

Hey everyone! Transfer calls happened today and.... I'M STAYING!!!
Looks like I will be dying in Memphis! I'm super excited. Elder
Peterson is staying here too, so it's gonna be a great transfer!

Monday was a ton of fun! We practiced our stuff for the talent show,
which went ok. It's hard to practice much when you're a missionary, so
it went about as good as you'd expect. Then we headed down to
Southaven, Mississippi as a district and went bowling. It was a ton of
fun! One of the sisters' recent converts showed up, too. I don't think
any of us got higher than 122 (I didn't break 100) but it was still
really fun. Then we went to the Tanger Outlet mall, to do a bit of
"looking at stuff I don't have money for" shopping. Then we went to
Family Home Evening at the D's house. It was great, we had a really
good lesson and then played Uno. I got family flashbacks :P

Tuesday we set about to do some secret service for the R.
family. Unfortunately, they ended up not being home, so we had to move
it to another day. We couldn't find a lot of people outside until
later that night, but we did manage to see some people! We had a
really cool lesson with this couple, L. and L., about the power
of the Book of Mormon. They had read what we had left them, which was
great, but they didn't really see why it was important. I guess when
we had taught them about it, they were under the impression that it
was just selections taken from the Bible. Soooo we fixed that one.
It's actually a really common misconception people have. The Book of
Mormon is a completely separate book from the Bible. Two histories,
two civilizations, so completely different records. However, they
teach the same gospel. It's like taking two different algebra books.
The examples and problems will be different. The order may be
different. But the principles are the same. You learn math from both
of them. It's the same idea with the Book of Mormon and the Bible.
Reading both only strengthens your knowledge and testimony of the
principles of he gospel of Christ. It's that simple.

Wednesday we managed to do the service for the R. family! They
still don't know for sure who did it though, so shhh :P Then we did a
lot of walking to find some new people. And we found some too! It was
great, and we got some exercise. We also saw the Pinto family. We
really want to see them progress, but there is so much works against
them. Guess that means Satan really doesn't want them in church, so we
will work harder on them :)

Thursday was the Christmas Zone Conference! We got there about an hour
late because we went and helped a less active member change the tire
on her truck. Not the easiest thing to do in a suit, let me tell you.
:P It was a great meeting though. It was Elder Wells' LAST MEETING!
That's crazy! I remember him from my second transfer! We had a gift
exchange, made from stuff we had around the apartment. I struck gold,
and got a Nerf gun. Then we did the talent show, which was crazy.
Everything went well, barely. It was still good though. We have some
talented people in the mission! Then we got to watch a movie, the one
time a year we get to. We watched the Cokeville Miracle, about a
terrorist attack at an elementary school where no one died, and all
the miracles that went with it. It was a pretty good movie. It was
pretty intense for the people who hadn't seen a movie in like two
years, like me :P That was about all we had time for. We went to the
chapel and helped clean up from the branch making 400 tamales for the
Christmas party Friday, which got me pretty stoked.

Friday was sweet! We went to our first appointment and they weren't
home, so we talked to the neighbors who were outside and had a good
lesson with them. We gave each of the 7 of them a Book of Mormon,
which meant we were out of books. So, we went back home, got some and
did a lot of planning for the next week/transfer. Then we went down to
the Christmas party! It was advertised to start at 6:30, so everyone
would be there by seven. That was the "secret" start time. So
naturally, everyone showed up around 7:45. It was still a good program
though. They had singing, piñatas, Santa, and a lot of tamales. I got
like a dozen. They're in the freezer right now :P

Saturday went ok. We weren't able to do much teaching, mainly just
walking around. No one was home, except for those who were sick. We
got some district Christmas shopping done while waiting for the other
guys to pick us up for dinner (I got everyone funny Christmas socks,
they're fantastic) and then we went to the B. house for dinner.
It was pretty good, and it's always fun at their house! We had a bit
of a jam session at his request, and everyone just had fun. We are
going over again Christmas Eve. Aww yeah.

Sunday even less got done. Church was awesome though! We were in a
meeting before church and we got a call from a random number. Turns
out it was a less active who hadn't been to church in years! He ran
into Peterson and Butler a few months back and got our number, then
called to get a ride to church. So that was cool! Also another cool
thing, R. got baptized! R. is the husband of this family the sisters
have been teaching. He is the last one to get baptized! He's a stud.
So yeah, that happened. Then we took pictures with our Christmas socks
(which they loved woo) and went home. Since we were on bike week, the
other elders drove us down to our appointments. None of them were here
for them to drop us, though, and then it started dumping rain. So that
kinda ruined it. But it was a good day looking back!

Hope you guys have a great week! AHH CHRISTMAS IS SO CLOSE!!!
Pics: the district with our funny socks! Aww we are awesome.

Christmas socks

Saying bye to Sister Aase and Elder Ernst! Also saying hi to Sister Tester!

Oh, Christmas tree...

Hey y'all! It was a pretty good week out here in Memphis! Busy, though. 
Monday was pretty good! I had my doctors appointment, which went
really well, a lot better than I thought it would be. Then I stopped
in the Little Rock building to go see my peeps there. Diaz, his new
companion Elder Anaya (who I wish I could serve with, he's awesome),
Sister Bennett and Sister Hudson, and all the rest of the gang. It was
great! Then we drove back to Memphis and went to see the R
family. That went super well, we got to talk with everyone.

Tuesday we had our standard district meeting and then we did a lot of
singing practice. We have a pretty full schedule: Thursday is a "find
the lost sheep" activity in the branch, which The district and I are
singing at, then Saturday we have a stake/citywide nativity event,
which all the zone is singing at, and THEN the zone conference talent
show, which we are both singing and dancing in. I am doing a solo in
each of them, but it's the same song so it isn't as bad. So we did
that, and then had some lunch at Gallo Giro. Then we went and saw the
L girls and their dad and read in the Book of Mormon with them.
Then we saw the P family and taught two of the  sons the
Restoration. It went really well, and they accepted it!

Wednesday was a little slower. We had a lot of stuff fall through.
J had another problem come up, so now he won't be here for a week.
We did manage to see the P, and that went well. We committed them
to come to the activity Thursday, which will be great! Then during
dinner we set up our Christmas tree. I attached a picture. We figured
since it was fake, it would need some help smelling like a tree. Plus,
pine scented car fresheners weren't that expensive. :P


Thursday was spent getting ready for the branch activity that night.
Elder Doty and Elder Heaton were here again, and we went out teaching
with them for a bit too. The activity went pretty well. The idea was
this: A lot of the less active members in the branch are from
Honduras, so President P organized an activity centered around
them. One of the missionaries from here, Elder T, is serving in
the Honduras Tegulcigalpa Mission, so he got the branch he was serving
in together and we had a Skype testimony meeting with them.
Afterwards, we had some dinner together. It was good. The best part
was that the P family came! They really loved the activity, and
the members fellowshipped them a lot.

Friday we went to downtown Memphis to the courthouse, so Elder
Peterson could work out his speeding ticket. It was pretty crazy, but
thanks to a member who is a lawyer we got everything dismissed.
Apparently, due to the mistakes made on the ticket (the car owner was
"the Baptist church" and they got his name and address wrong) it could
not be assumed that any information on the ticket was true. So he got
off clean. Since we were down there and it was our lunch hour, we
stopped on Beale Street, one of the main historical streets. It was
pretty cool. 

We contacted an exchange student from Brazil too. She was
cool! She lives in Massachusetts though, so Bailey, keep an eye out
for that referral :P After that, we got a call from Bro. L asking
us to help him by doing some translating at he hospital for him. His
dad had been in there for a week, and they were going to work out the
outpatient treatment for him. That took a looooong time, and so we got
out just in time for dinner at the Rs, which was good. Then we
went over to visit the Ds, and got to have a good talk with them.


Saturday was also spent getting ready for a Christmas thing. The stake
does an annual Nativity festival, with a lot of other churches
involved and stuff. Our zone was asked to perform some Christmas songs
that night. We were planning to do some teaching and then go down, but
I got called in to translate for a baptismal interview, so we went
down south, only to find that she had moved it last minute to 5 p.m. We
didn't have the miles to go back, so we just got some extra practice
time. The performance went well. Not many people were there, but it
was still good.

Sunday was eh. I had caught a cold the night before, so I was pretty
out of it and couldn't do much. We did get to watch the Christmas
devotional, which was nice. We watched it at the R house with
the Rs, and it was really great. They had a friend over, and she
watched it too! Woo! We also helped them decorate their Christmas
tree, which was fun.

So that was my week! We still have a lot to do this week, so hopefully
it all works out well! I love all of you guys a lot!
Here's the tree haha