turkey bowl

This week was Thanksgiving, as y'all already know, and it was real REAL fun.

Our Branch President and his wife had us over for dinner, the Muniz family.  I love them both so much! President Muniz is a really busy guy.  He is a salesman/installer of some random part in the oil field, he makes real good money, but is EXTREMELY busy all the time.  I have no idea how he manages work, family, and his calling.  It was one of the only times I've had to sit down with him and chat for a while.  They had a full house!  The Pena family, another family from the branch, and a couple other families form the 1st ward came as well.  It was so much fun and noisy!  It was just like I was eating with y'all except none of you were there....so basically the only similarity was the amount of people and the noise level.  I loved it.  I was hoping we'd eat a real mexican thanksgiving dinner, but it was just normal except with salsa on top of everything.  Everyone here eats Pecan Pie....I love that stuff.  It rivals Derby Pie.  At my Thanksgivings from now on I'll just make sure they have both haha.

The best part about thanksgiving, though, was the Turkey Bowl.  Easily the Turkey Bowl is my favorite even of the entire year.  This year was the first year I've played in 2 years so it was a real great time!  Gillette really didn't want to go at all, but he was extremely nice and decided to put up with it so I could go, I was real grateful for that. WE combined the first ward and the branch so there were enough to have two games going on at a time.  The Spanish Branch had 15 non-members there...CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?!  It was so successful that they decided to play football every Saturday and we're invited and allowed to go:)  YAY!  My team went undefeated just how it should be. I accidentally tackled the Stake President on the last drive to secure the win.  In all reality he just tripped and I was near him, but everyone blamed me for it so they could move up 25 yard for the penalty haha.  All in all it was a really really good time. 

We also had a Zone Training this week that was really good.  Easily the best Zone training I have been a part of. THe sister training leaders taught us about the importance and power of using the book of mormon in everything.  THey showed us a neat technique to using it during our finds.  I have since applied that teaching and have seen HUGE success.  THere really is so much power in the word of God, especially the word of God that is unique to our church haha. The Zone leaders just lead a really good discussion about a few rules and stuff.  I am a really opinionated guy, I always have been, so whenever there is a conversation like that I always fight my point of view real hard. I had a hand in changing some of the rules and stopping some potential new rules, thank heavens haha. The best part, though, is that the Spirit was there and so powerful!  Even though we were debating in a sense, the spirit still testified to our hearts what needed to happen.  I felt extremely edified.  We all received a lot of revelation for the work in our specific areas.

Yesterday we picked up a new investigator names Lin.  Lin is straight from Cuba.  Let me just tell you this right now, Cuban should be it's own language.  Thank heavens we had a native member there with us for the lesson, because I could barely understand anything she said!  I like Tex-Mex a lot better haha.  She is very humble, though, and has a lot of potential.  I am excited to keep teaching her!

I love y'all so much! Be careful in the snow!  I don't have snow yet...but I bet y'all do!  
Love,
Elder Caleb Porter

 I decorated Tom's tree for him.  I went ALL OUT.

Thanksgiving, bad picture.