The Legend of Elder Hicks: The Spirit of Song and Sad Goodbyes.

Helllooooooo Everybody!
I had an amazing week! And it was exactly what I needed.
So some of the great events that happened this week!
Turkey Bowl! Woohoo! All of the missionaries in the North
Western chunk of New Jersey got together and set up teams to play
football Thanksgiving morning! It was super fun and absolutely
ridiculous. We all set up uniforms for our teams too. We had the Red,
White, Blue Team dressed in America Colors. True Blue who were all
blue. We had a White Out team. And My team was Black and Camo.
Pictures will be provided. My team went 1-4... but the only team we
beat was the one that was killing everyone so I'll take that as
ultimate victory.
Thanksgiving! We got the opportunity to spend thanksgiving
dinner at the wonderful home of the Wimmer Family. The food was
absolutely amazing!!! Not to mention that I'm pretty sure I got more
roasted then the turkey that evening. I've never laughed so much in my
entire life....

Friday we had a really cool experience. We were down in
Flemington and our appointment cancelled so we had nothing to do and
as the wonderful missionaries we are, we forgot to plan any kind of
backup. So we started going through potential investigator records and
Less active records trying to decide who to see. Now I haven't done
this strategy in a long time. I had fallen away from "Potential
Hunting" because it had never yielded fruit. Now for you that don't
know, a Potential Investigator Record is a record of someone who had
some sort of Contact with missionaries to the point that we got a
number or address. In some cases the missionaries had taught them one
lesson. But in all cases there was never a return appointment. So
potential hunting is when you go back to these people who had just a
tiny bit of missionary contact in the past and try again. So, back to
the story, I'm scrolling through names and I see this one couple. And
the second I see their names I immediately know that that is who we're
going to see. We get there and a nice young mom opens the door and is
very nice to us. We talked for just a minute, finding out that her
family is actually going through a hard time right now and that she'd
love to have us come by another time.... I haven't had it go down that
easy on a door approach in my entire time in Clinton, so it was a
small blessing for me.

Now for the big day, if you all haven't seen it on Facebook
already, I sang in a local Interfaith Christmas concert yesterday!
Starting with a solo singing Silent Night to the Mannheim Steamroller
Piano Arrangement. After that I was given the opportunity to sing with
the Hunterdon Harmonizers, a local Barbershop that is apparently a big
deal out here. Singing Hallelujah, and Do you hear what I Hear. And
then finally I sang with the Ward choir and with all the Church
singing groups doing the Hallelujah Chorus! It was absolutely amazing
and the spirit was definitely there to help all the performers. My
whole time practicing Silent Night I couldn't hold and hit the high
note in Peace and Born at the end of each verse without making it
sound garbled and bad. And then I get up there and do it without any
problem! I'm so thankful again for the opportunity that I was given To
sing in this concert! It will go down in my most favorite memories.

Now sadly for my final news. I'm am getting transferred out of
Clinton. I have been called as a Zone Leader up in Englewood to be
companions with Elder Trask. Apparently they still think I'm a good
missionary or something because the keep giving me higher and higher
assignments. I need to go do something bad to drop me off the list or
something.
I'm deeply sad to leave Clinton though, I've been here for 7
1/2 months and I have built a large family of people that I'll for
sure be staying in touch with! This Ward has helped me so much in
growing as a person and as a missionary! Thankyou!!!

I go to start a new journey in my mission!

Elder Anthony Sleigh Hicks
New Jersey Morristown Mission