A letter from Andrew:

Hello family!
Sorry for not emailing last week - the computers here would not connect to the internet. They ended up working later that night but I could not email home cause it was not P-Day anymore.
This past week has been a challenge for the work here in Crescent City. It has been rainy, cold, everyone is gone for the holidays, and everyone is sick even ME!! Horray..... NOT.... I don't like being sick. But you have to deal with it while you are a missionary. I still have to go out and work. On the better side of things, Thanksgiving was great here. We went to our ward mission leader's home for dinner and they had tons of food. They had enough for twice the amount of people that actually came. There were 10 adults and 5 kids. They said they bought 4 turkeys that were still in the freezer, apparently they were cheap this year. Suprisingly, I did not eat very much - only one plate, I guess my stomach has shrunk a lot since I came out. That is fine with me. That means I can keep this weight off when I get home. It's crazy to think that I have been out almost a year. I still feel new to all of this missionary stuff. I still have a lot to learn and there is NOT ENOUGH TIME!!! I don't like that either. Can I stay out another two years? Please! If not, that is ok too, but I wish I could stay out a lot longer than two years.
Anyway on to who we are teaching: we have a baptism coming up soon on the 10th, she is super awesome and has that great desire to get baptized but she struggles getting to church each week cause she works 5 jobs and has a lot of medical problems but that is not stopping her. She has the strength to overcome everything that is thrown into her path. We just need her to come to church and then she can get baptized! We have another 2 people that we have a baptismal date with for Dec. 24th. They are really cool to0. The mom is formally Jewish. The daughter went to a singles' ward when she was in college because they had the best morals and she did not want to hangout with anyone else. Those are the updates on baptsims and how everything with teaching is going.
We are having trouble getting our investigators to keep the appointments we set with them and so that makes it a challenge for us to reach the 20 lessons a week. We have enough people but no one holds to their word so things are slow in that sense, but those that let us teach them are doing really well. I love it here cause I am finally in an area where people want to listen to us, unlike my last 2 areas where people were stuck in their ways. There was a really cool experience we had tracting the other day and to this day, it still stumps me because this never happened to me. We were walking up to this house and we saw this guy cooking and it was right by the front door. We get closer and he starts to walk to the front door and opens the door to come talk to us, and the first thing that comes to my mind is, "This guy is going to come out yell at us, cuss us out, and tell us to get out of here. Get ready for it." But suprisingly, he does not yell at us. He actually invites us in to talk to him! He said " Hey guys! I am the one to talk to. I am the one not saved yet." My jaw drops and my mind goes blank of what to say to him. I was so shocked. So we talk to him for a little bit, and sure enough, he is moving accross town into the 2nd ward missionaries' area. But he said that he was going to come to church next week and check it out because he has never been before. He said we could talk to him some more when they get all moved in. So, the blessings that come from tracting - he was the only one that wanted to talk to us on that street. It was really cool to experience.
That is the exciting news of the week. So have a good rest of the week. Hope you all are having a fun holiday season. Can't wait to call home for Christmas. Crazy how time flys. Love you all.
Elder Pelton