I'm sure you're anxious to hear about the open house, but I'll get to that in a little bit.
Last week I finished the Book of Mormon, though I started in Alma. I'm starting 2 Nephi this week so it should be about a month until I finish it.
The music we are allowed to listen to is anything that is inspirational, uplifting, and keeps the Spirit. I think you have a copy of the Missionary Handbook if you want to read the exact words. Basically it's left up to missionary discretion a lot of the time. Anything instrumental is fine I would think, so if she wants to send some Jim Brickman or something, that'd be fine. As for other stuff, it's your call as much as mine. If you send it and I don't think I should listen to it I won't. Speaking of music though, Vocal Point came out with a new Christmas CD I hear. We heard about it from a member whose son is in Vocal Point. They're last name is Shelton, I don't know his first name. But they said they knew Shaina's friend Jake who was in vocal point and they have been to a bunch of shows and stuff so that was pretty cool to talk about.
Last week I finished the Book of Mormon, though I started in Alma. I'm starting 2 Nephi this week so it should be about a month until I finish it.
The music we are allowed to listen to is anything that is inspirational, uplifting, and keeps the Spirit. I think you have a copy of the Missionary Handbook if you want to read the exact words. Basically it's left up to missionary discretion a lot of the time. Anything instrumental is fine I would think, so if she wants to send some Jim Brickman or something, that'd be fine. As for other stuff, it's your call as much as mine. If you send it and I don't think I should listen to it I won't. Speaking of music though, Vocal Point came out with a new Christmas CD I hear. We heard about it from a member whose son is in Vocal Point. They're last name is Shelton, I don't know his first name. But they said they knew Shaina's friend Jake who was in vocal point and they have been to a bunch of shows and stuff so that was pretty cool to talk about.
Mitch is doing pretty well. He's one of our best attendees at our Book of Mormon class and he's at church most weeks. He's going to have an appointment this Thursday to do a consultation for the shot, and I'm pretty sure that he has another appointment to get it next week some time. So we'll see how it all shakes out before the end of the transfer hopefully.
Now for the Open House. The Open House was interesting because it was very well planned and set up, but it wasn't very well attended. Part of that may have been due to Stake Conference the previous Sunday, and General Conference the Sunday before, so we couldn't make announcements about it. It was also Corona High's homecoming and a Stake youth dance. So that may have drawn away some people. Because there weren't very many people there, it was hard to do the tours and keep the evening on schedule but the Talent Show was great and the Relief Societies came through on the treats so that part was alright.
I say the talent show went great, but it very nearly didn't happen. So we originally had about 6 people who said that they were willing to be in talent show. A couple weeks ago, one lady fell through because she'd had a prior arrangement that she had forgotten. Then this Sunday, one of our main acts that everybody knew had to cancel because his daughter was moving. Then, at 2:30, the day of the Open House, we get two calls. One that said one of our acts was going to the hospital with his son and had to cancel, and the other was one of our acts who said he wasn't sure if he'd be able to make it because his grandkids are in town. So we talked to everyone and prayed to see how it would go, and asked the other acts we had if they could take a little more time. In the end it all went really well. We ended up having a guy named Brother Kent come and play the guitar for us before he had a movie night with his grandkids, and he was amazing! Following that we had an improv group, that one of our members is part of, perform for a little while and it was pretty funny too. Our final act was a little skit put on by some members of our ward. I had volunteered to play the piano if we needed it, but we ended up not needing the extra time at the end.
We only had 4 non-members show up to the event, but they were very interested it seemed. They are in the Corona Sisters' ward so we'll have to ask them how things are going with them. We also had about 30 members show up (but probably 200 cookies and brownies), so we had a little bit of an imbalance there. I was disappointed that more members didn't come, and even some of the members who were part of the tour didn't stay for the talent show. Overall I think it was well put together and executed, we just chose a bad night for it. We also might have advertised the missionary work aspect of it a little bit too much because I think people thought they shouldn't come if they didn't have a non-member to bring with them. Either way though, our ward council said that they thought it was a good learning experience and they would like to make it an annual event, though at a better time. And in the future they might focus it a bit more on family history or emergency preparedness or something like that. I'm glad we did it and it went well, but I'm also glad that it is over so that we don't have to call and plan and spend time on it anymore.
And even though we didn't get any potential people to go see from it, we actually have seen blessings in other ways. We had a couple referrals get texted to us over the weekend, and then this morning we received a call from guy who said he wanted to learn more. He'd been on mormon.org and I guess they tracked down our phone number for him because he lives in our area. We have scheduled to meet up with him next week, he'll be out of town this week. We'll see where that goes.
Homesickness still hasn't been a problem and I don't think it will be. There was one P-Day where I was walking around in my OU Ultimate shirt and had my bag on and I felt like I was on a college campus again, so that was a weird moment of deja vu. And Elder Camper is going to work hard too. He's finally started to narrow down what he thinks he wants to do with his life and what timeline he'll be on so that's put his mind at ease. Before when he had no idea and like 28 different plans to think about, it was all he'd talk about. I'll do my best to keep him on task too. He's started counting down by taking down pictures from off his pin board and wiriting the number of days he has left.
Hope everything else is going good at home with work and the family.
See you soon,
Elder Cornaby
"Get on your knees and pray, then get on your feet and work." -Gordon B. Hinckley