Happy New Year!
Hope you've all had a great Christmas and New Year's Eve. Elder Perry and I are loving Anderson and I have to say this transfer has been one of the high points of my mission so far. I've definitely had some struggles, but I love my companion, I love this area, I love the members here, and I love our friends we teach. Coming from a big college town like Fayetteville, I really didn't expect to like this little ward in the country but this month has been a good time.
Me write two week worth of thing and use lot word. If you want skim then hope 
do trick.
do trick. ~
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We got seven whole boxes of at least ten bags of Hostess mini donuts each from our Bishop and gave four boxes of them out at the town of Noel's Christmas parade. While doing so we met an awesome Hawaiian family who have family members in the Church on the island–and the family came to church the next morning and loved it!
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Remember that Thai family in the middle of nowhere who let us use their bathroom and invited us to their son's birthday party? Well, the big day finally arrived. We walked in all loaded jp with the remaining three boxes' worth of mini-donuts as a birthday gift only to find that the first event of the party was actually an hour-long sermon from an English preacher with a slideshow in Spanish and another guy translating into Karen (Kuh-ren, not care-n) and we were just flabbergasted. Honestly, it took everything Elder Perry and I had to not just bust up laughing at the bizarreness of the situation we'd just managed to get ourselves in. It was just so unreal.
Well, after half an hour of listening to some kinda funky doctrine about sin and cleansing with the rest of the party goers, we got up to leave early, but the pastor conveniently finished his sermon like thirty seconds after we did and everyone gathered around for food. Anyways, upon dishing myself up some rice noodles and mystery soup, however, I discovered that the only solid in the broth was–you guessed it–chicken feet. Yum.
My courage faltered for a moment, but then I realized I'd quite possibly never be offered chicken foot soup again for the rest of my life and I turned around to grab me some digits. Worth it for the flex, but man, that was one of the most surreal experiences of my whole mission overall. Thai birthday party sermon with chicken foot soup in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Man.
Shoutout to Brother and Sister Horrocks for feeding us and buying us water bottles every week. They are so chill and so supportive of all the missionaries, especially because their son is serving a mission in the Arizona/Nevada area right now. Every visit to their home is so rejuvenating haha. Missionary spa for real
One of our new converts who got baptized like a month and a half ago offered us a beer when we visited him this week 
and when we reminded him we don't drink beer in the Church he offered us wine instead
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and when we reminded him we don't drink beer in the Church he offered us wine instead + I got to see my friends Clayton and Brilynn last Sunday!! They came to visit family near Bentonville and just *happened* to be in one of just two congregations that meet in Anderson out of the twenty or so that meet in the Bentonville-Rogers area. Tender mercy for real. The Bredensteiner-Bentz family has a stacked roster, let me tell ya. They're so awesome. Seeing them on my mission was so fun and soooooooo weird at the same time
+ A church member invited us to their Christmas family reunion dinner and I got to see my friend Madi from Fayetteville again! It was so fun catching up with her. Plus, I also got to say hi to my other good friend Byron over the phone after she was cool enough to FaceTime him. You're cool for that, Madi. Plus, we totally robbed them blind at their white elephant gift exchange. Elder Perry got a dancing cactus and a desktop waterfall and I got an official UofA Razorbacks-themed cutting board. Big wins 
+ Our mission leaders, the Hathaways, hosted a huge Christmas devotional with the fifty or so missionaries in the Bentonville and Rogers stakes and we had a huge game day led by President right after for like three hours. It was pretty sweet.
= Mowed my own hair for the first time in my whole life today. I mean cut. Both words apply when your hair's as thick as it runs in my family.
Had exchanges again and I went with my old companion Elder Handley! We saw some good success and saw an awesome miracle where we prayed for an exact spot to start knocking doors at and got led to this random country road outside of town with a few houses. It didn't look like the best spot to knock at logically, but we decided to trust God's guidance and like thirty seconds after getting out of the car we found a phone on the ground with an incoming call. We picked it
+Got offered a blunt for the first time in my life from our bro Armando who used to work for the cartel before he ruptured both his kidneys. We said nah for the record. No zaza for the missionaries
Our friend Jenny was baptized! She's best friends with a an awesome member of the ward here and we can tell she's gonna go far.
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Song of the week: "Christmas Time Is Here" by Vince Guaraldi Trio
Google Photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/2sk1refRidSszyYk7
A missionary I served with made a social media page called @called_to_serve_again and it's all about helping missionaries who finished their missions early connect with one another and build a community together. I thought it was a cool idea so here's a lil' plug. Check it out if it sounds interesting!
My freshman year biology professor gave a BYU devotional! https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/jamie-jensen/faith-science-symbiotic-pathways-truth/
Scripture of the week: 1 Corinthians 9:13-14
Do ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple? and they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar? / Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.
Love, Elder Rigby
Whoops totally forgot to finish typing up one of our stories from last week.
So, about that exchange with Elder Handley...
"We picked up that phone we found and answered the call to find out the lady on the other line only spoke Spanish. She handed it over to her English-speaking friend and we ended up meeting him just down the street to give the phone back. Funny enough, this guy didn't even live here but he had family members who were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and he used to go with them whenever he'd visit! He said he wasn't a very churchy guy, but thst our timing was a little too good. He thought it was almost like it was a miracle or something...
Heh heh. Now we're cooking."
¡Feliz nuevo año!
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