Happy New Year!!!

Sorry if this e-mail is a little late, President decided to move our Preperation Day from wednesday to saturday because everyone in NY would be recovering from partying last night. I hope everyone was able to have a wonderful time bringing in the New Year, and I hope everybody has awesome resolutions to help them have a better year this next year. I also hope everyone had a great Christmas and got to spend time with their families and loved ones. I know that this Christmas I really learned how important my family and loved ones are to me in my life, I guess the saying is true that absence makes the heart grow stronger. I had a great Christmas though and got to spend most of the day with all the missionaries from the NY NY North Mission and it was awesome. President Smith read us an awesome story called the Little Shepherd (yes the story was entirally about me :) jk) It was about this little boy that was crippled and the son of one of the shepherds who had witnessed the Saviors birth. The little boy wished desperately that he could witness such a miracle but in reality he was just a crippled young shepherd. Then a man showed up and the young shepherd invited him to share his food with him. Throughout the story the young boy learns more about the man and soon finds out that tonight is the mans birthday, strangely the man is not to excited about this and says that his journey must soon end. The boy then shares the cake his mother had baked for him and the man is deeply touched, as the man goes to leave he lays his hand on the boys shoulder and smiles then he walks away. After that moment the boy was no longer crippled. It was such an awesome story and really made me think of what it would be like to meet the Savior. I then realized that we will all get the chance to meet Him and its important on to know what we will be able to tell Him. Ether we will be able to tell Him that we did our best in this life to follow Him, or we might say that we didn't do enough. At this New Year I think it would be awesome if everybody in the whole wide world thought about what it will be like to see and talk to the Savior. I think a lot of New years resolutions would be focused around following Him more, not just in words but in actions also. We must learn and grow to be more like the Savior in all things. Alma 42 talks about this time being a time a probation and we should all be preparing to meet God. Lets all prepare ourselves YAY!!!!!!

Well some news about people we are teaching: Sharon Grant an awesome lady who lives in PA on the weekends is getting baptized on the 22nd in PA. We are teaching her during the week and the Elders in PA are teaching her on the weekends. She is a solid investigator and is super cool, everything we ask her to read she reads and is so so so solid. Her daughters might be getting baptized too so pray for them that they will gain a testimony of the Book of Mormon like their mother did and they will commit to being baptized. So yea Sharon is awesome but their is also another investigator is pretty awesome. His name is Christ....thats right his name is Christ. He is hopefully going to be baptized on the 29th and his girlfriend (hopefully soon to be wife) may also be baptized. Thats pretty much all that we are teaching but we are doing some fun things to find new people. Yesterday we made a 5-foot tall Book of Mormon and did some street contacting around it, Mom you would be proud of your son because it was my idea and I put my artistic side to use. Also a couple days ago we used to snow to write on the wall of this abandoned house "READ THE BOOK OF MORMON" hahah I hope people heed the advice of the wall and search us out and ask us for a free Book of Mormon. Oh and I also made dog out of snow that looked like it was peeing on the fire hydrant. hahaha that last one didn't really invite others to come unto Christ but it was pretty funny. Well I am running out of time and I have a lot to do today. So I love you all and I hope you are having a great day.
Love
Elder Shepherd