January 5, 2014- A Transfer

Dear Family and Friends!

Happy New Year! I can't believe that it is 2015 and that I have already been on my mission for almost 5 1/2 months. This is going to be a great year because I get to be a missionary the entire year! I had a great time on New Year's Eve. We had the night off after 5pm. So Elder Morgan and I had dinner with some of the English Elders at TGI Fridays and then we played Harry Potter Clue at our apartment. We didn't stay up until the New Year, we went to bed at 10:30 p.m. just like every other night.

We got transfer calls on Saturday night and I'm getting transferred! I am being transferred to Virginia Beach! Virginia Beach is the only other Spanish area in the mission that has a Spanish branch. It is a pretty big branch with about 70 people that attend weekly. My new companion is going to be Elder Bradshaw. I actually already know Elder Bradshaw because I've met him a few times at mission events. He's a really cool guy. He is thinking about playing football at BYU so he's pretty big guy. He has the reputation of being the best Spanish speaker in the mission, so I know that I'm going to learn a lot of Spanish from him.

We had a really good day on Saturday. Elder Morgan and I set some goals Saturday morning to pass out a certain number of pass along cards, Book of Mormons, pamphlets, and restoration DVDs. We saw a lot of miracles happen. We met a new investigator from Venezuela. She was really excited to see us but she couldn't let us come in to teach her because she was cooking dinner at the moment. She was super apologetic and was apologizing to us and to God. We set up an appointment to talk with her later in the week. We also handed out three Book of Mormons. We knocked on a lady's door named Socorro. We opened the door and we told her we had a message to share with her and she let us in. We talked to her about the Book of Mormon and we committed her to read it! We also went to the home of another investigator named Raul. Raul had a friend there in his trailer and we invited him to sit down for the lesson but he said he would just listen from the kitchen. It was a super powerful lesson and we committed Raul to read the Book of Mormon. At the end of the lesson, as I was about to close with a prayer, Raul's friend rushed over and sat down with us for the prayer. It was a really cool experience! From that day, I learned that if you set goals and you work as hard as you can to achieve them, you really will see miracles happen!

The past couple days have been sad saying goodbye to everyone in Newport News. It was especially hard at church to say goodbye to everyone. President Chamberlain, the branch president, asked me to bear my testimony in Spanish to everyone. Luckily my new area isn't too far away from Newport News, and President Baker is going to allow me and my companion to go back to Newport News so that we can attend Edwin and Miriam's baptism on Friday, January 17th.

We also changed Ramon, Belkis, Madeline, and Dyana’s baptism date to January 31st. Iris is still doing really well and she has a baptismal date for February 7th. President Baker will probably allow us to come down for those baptisms as well.

I hope everyone has an amazing week!

Love Elder Cannon