Yes mama owen loves his mama

crazy week this week! now that everyone is officially done with their hollidays the work has exploded! we got about five new families to teach and some other people we found super finding this week! 

wednesday we got to go to this service that this guy i talked to on the bus invited us to where its like a breakfast deal for people trying to overcome addictions and other trials and we came and the guy in charge almost started crying he was so happy we showed up! it was crazy! so we helped out with that and talked to a bunch of these people some crazy haha but thats always fun! within five minutes being there this random guy walked by and without a word slipped this paper into elder aylworth's hands and disappeared and the guy we were talking to was like yeah dont worry about that hes schizophrenic and we looked at the paper and it was some note with the name of one our other missionaries that we know so we were like wait  and found him and apparently he met the elder and they scheduled a time to meet up but never saw each other again. but he wants to learn more so we just teach him at the service there! after talking to him i saw this african woman looking over at me so i was like hey hows it goin and she was like yeah i know you, i gave you my number last summer but you never called. apparently some other missionaries got her number but forgot about her and she took that as her sign that God didnt want her to join this church and i was like gah no thats just missionaries not doing their job. but she kept saying she wasnt interested. but i felt like i needed to keep talking to her which may have annoyed her at first haha but we got into an awesome conversation and at the end she was like alright, you prepare something for me for next week when you come again and after that you will come to my home and teach me and my children. haha that was awesome. we asked her name and she was like how old are you? and i told her 18 and she busted out laughing and was like you call me mama cause you are my baby and have no right to call me anything else. i love having african moms here. so yeah thats been awesome! 

thursday we got to go on exchanges and elder canon came over here and that was fun! hes become like a brother to me so that was awesome getting to work with him. earlier this week i went through an old area book cause i had a feeling there were names in there that we needed to go through so i flipped through all these records that went back years and whenever i had a feeling to pull it out i did then we passed by all the people on the list and every single one has invited us back to learn more and they want to be taught again. that was a fun experience! our work load has gotten so much bigger i love it! 

ah man we finally got to visit this guy Ali Khan who called us a while back and we passed by his house so many times and called him so many times but he always rescheduled over the phone and never came to the door when we stopped by but sunday we both felt like we needed to pass by him even though we only had thirty minutes before our next appointment so we changed directions and rang the bell and he let us in! annnndd then got like totally naked right there in front of us to change. hes this oooold old northern indian guy so yeah. yeah. after he got dressed he told us he wants to come to church with us and learn more about Joseph Smith and the restoration and then he asked me to put his hearing aid in his ear and that was awesome. i like gently rested it on the inside and he was like thats not far enough and so i had to like put my finger down his hairy ear and i looked up across the room and elder aylworth was horrified and ah that was nasty town. good lesson afterwards though. 

so yeah super awesome busy week! apparently we've been the coldest area in the entire world recently. like including the north and south pole. not sure how that works but i believe it haha. we would step outside and if you looked in the direction of the wind for like two seconds our eyes would freeze. so yeah thats been crazy! the frostbite and some other things were kinda rough trials to work with especially with walking everywhere but the rewards were totally worth it!! and they still are! the Lord always sees our efforts. i love it here so much!!! love you all!! 

-Elder Halliday

we had a treat yo self night after walking about ten miles in the snow finding people. so much shwarma 

the U.S. embassy #merica