What's up big Christmas

Hello space cadets and rangers of the deep sea, I hope you all had a killer Christmas and got the red pontiac aztec you were wishing for.

This was quite the week, on tuesday we were asked to go to Gaithersburg to pick up new mission cars. So 6 missionaries, went out of the mission to pick up cars and drive them back individually by themselves. So i drove out of the mission by myself with no companion and no tiwi (for those that know tiwi the biggest bully ever). Super weird but we were asked to do it. I might have forgotten what the speed limit was due to my excitement of having no tiwi to govern my speed. Also that same day I went on an exchange with Elder Funk who is a brand new missionary. We biked around his area in the freezing cold and got a return appointment with someone by tracting. Elder Funk is a creature. He is super funky, such a riot to be around hahahha

Karina is doing super well, she soaked up the Plan of Salvation this past week and is hungry for more! She wants to come to church so hopefully we can make that happen this Sunday.

Friday we had our mission Christmas conference which was super fun and i got to see some homiez.



Christmas was super tight we spent a lot of the day with the Larkins, a family in the Clarksville branch. They fed us breakfast and we played ping pong and all sorts of stuff. shoutout to my family for being super sick and having a good skype sesh.



keep on lurkin keep on wurkin and always remember to read yur scriptures!


here are some pics you can print out on mugs and save them for your grandchildren. Probably not though because my hair looks like a garbage can

"the whole crew's here, the haters cant keep up. Now they are in fear, they're gonna get messed up" - Lost Cause me, e mink, e ressler, & e meyer

Elder Garcia shoutout to my boiz from the shepherd ward priest quorum

Street Rangers reunion

Skype city

cruissssssin into 2017

Christmas in July. Actually it's December. Christmas really is in December.

What's up space cadets, thanks for tuning in to another week of alligators on skateboards

The long night is o'er! We have found an investigator! Yes you heard me! After two months of nothing we have an investigator! Her name is Karina, we met her last week at our stand at the community college and we had our first lesson with her this week which went super well (aside from one thing I'll describe in a second)! She understood the message of the restoration and the need of a prophet. She doesn't have a whole lot of religious background, so she just soaked up everything we taught her! We are seeing her again this week.

So before I explain the one thing that didn't go so well about the lesson, I'm going to put this in to context. So we met with Karina on campus at HCC, so there was other people around. So about 5 minutes in to the lesson some punk who I'm pretty sure is part of the school staff, walked up to us and was like, "did you tell her that you believe in a different Jesus than in the Bible?" and started saying some other completely false stuff and I kinda lost it. We've spent two months working to get an investigator and I was NOT about to let this fool mess it up! Basically long story short i kinda lost my temper and told this guy that he was absolutely false and that we weren't going to let him tear down our faith and then I demanded that he leave, and he did. So aside from that it went really well, and thankfully Karina was really understanding of what happened despite my lack of self control and understood that we aren't lying to her.

In other news, we went on exchanges with our zone leaders and me and Elder Hawley were kickin it in my area. We went street contacting at a lake in the frigid cold and had a good time. We spent like two days this week volunteering at a food bank which was such a pleasure. It was so nice to help the people in need this holiday season. Also it snowed the other day, and then rained. Gross.



Friends and baby alligators, and adult foxes. Do not forget to do the elf boogie this holday season. And stay away from eating paper bags. Paper is not meant to be consumed. Also make sure to focus on Jesus Christ this week and why it is so important that he came to earth!

snow I look like a penguin not sure why

exchange

snow

my companion is a freak

The Best of Elder Poulsen and Elder Meyer Volume 0

Last week I complained that it was a boring week, this week I got what I asked for! This week we:

1. got in a car accident
2. got kicked out of our apartment
3. lost our phone

Now I must inform you these are not quite all as bad as they sound. We got rear ended by some lady and we were all fine (though we did get thrown into the middle of an intersection during a red light but thankfully nobody was coming and we didn't get hit again). The mission office called us (5 minutes after we found our phone) and told us we need to be out of our apartment so that a senior couple can move in to it, so we had to move apartments with a day notice, my new address is
5455 Columbia Rd #213
Columbia, MD 21044
Lastly, we lost our phone over night and found it the next day 11 miles away in the grass on the side of someone's house, all I can say is the spirit guides us in times of need.

So yeah our life kinda got turned upside down this week but not really, in other news, the greatest thing that happened this week is we finally got to set up a stand at Howard Community College (HCC)! HCC is the number 4 ranked community college in the country and has a lot of people. We have been trying to arrange this ever since I got here and finally got to do it. We worked with the branch missionaries and set up a stand complete with hot cider, donuts, and tons of materials! We mainly focused our efforts on the church's Christmas initiative #LightTheWorld. We gave out hundreds of pass along cards and talked to tons of people and got one return appointment! Which might not seem like much but is pretty exciting for us right now. One of the branch missionaries put a video of our stand up on the stake Facebook page and it got like 1000 views so were making good things happen!

Oh also, when we got rear ended it was on our way to set up our stand, so we were late to this thing we've been planning for months. supr cool

in other news we went on exchanges on tuesday and I went to Savage Mill with elder Wilson and walked around in the pouring rain for a few hours, it was good fun.


here are some pictures you can hang on your Christmas tree

Here's our stand

exchange

chopped car

best fortune I've ever gotten

super cool pic of me in our new crib new address 5455 Columbia Rd #213
Columbia, MD 21044 i repeat

I'm a Christmas Unicorn

Dear Spike,

Hello space cadets, this week was absolutely thrilling! Nothing happened. We had 3 lessons scheduled with potential investigators and they all canceled. Every time we go to people's houses they don't answer the door. Every time we go street contacting nobody is interested in talking to us. Elder Meyer and I have been working real hard, we fasted twice this week, and still nothing's happening.

The Columbia Stake had a really cool event last night called the Messiah Sing. A bunch of performers, some members of the church and some not, performed Handel's Messiah and the audience sang along with some of the songs. Super cool!

Friday was one of the funniest days of my life. We raked leaves with the Spanish Elders, Elder Salmon and Elder Rollins, all day. We helped our friend Roberto rake and then went and raked for a lady in the Columbia 1st ward. While we were there i was with Elder Salmon raking in her front yard and she was flipping out cause he was wearing shorts and a t shirt so she grabbed him a jacket. Then we were like what if she offers him pants and we turn around and shes walking out with pants and i started to laugh then she comes over and starts putting the pants on him over his shorts i was so weak! I was laughing so hard i had tears running down my face it was so funny and i was turned the other way so that she couldnt see me laughing i felt bad but it was sooo funny. That probably didnt seem very funny but it was.

Sorry for my boring emails lately. This is life in an average American city.

a moose once bit my sister
actually i dont have a sister.

In other news I was reading Elder Uchtdorf's talk from the women's session of General Conference and he talks about how there are 2 things faith cannot do:
1: faith cannot violate another person's agency
2: faith cannot force our will upon God's
As I read that this week I realized that no matter how much faith I have that we will find people to teach, it also depends on God's will and the agency of others.



Here are some pictures for your wallpaper

me with a shovel that has dirt on it

laying in bags