Transfers and the Best Day!

  Hello my dear Subjects from the far off lands!
We had a super awesome week! And it finally snowed for real! And
someone wrecked my car!
    This week was super good. We had a ton of lessons and did a ton of
work. It was really funny early on in the week because me and Elder
Trask had to give a training to the whole zone on Influence and we
were trying to find a fun way to keep everyone's attention. So we came
up with a short skit! There are a lot of inside jokes in it but it's
goofy and lame enough to show everyone, the video is provided below.
    After that we got to go in Exchanges with the Assistants. I got to
go hang out in Elizabeth for a day with Elder Wildman. It was super
cool. Elder Wildman is a spiritual powerhouse. He taught me a lot
about how to feel the spirit and he is a great example of a
missionary. Now for the sad part.... so I told you guys that we got a
new car last week! Brand new Subaru and it is my baby, I love it a
lot. And while we were on exchange the other missionary got in a wreck
with my baby!!! So now there is a big dent in the passenger side rear
corner of the car and we have to lose our car for a week to get it
fixed.... it deeply saddens me.
    It snowed! Saturday it snowed a bunch and I was so excited to try
out the new car in the snow! I was throwing it in spins in the snow
and slidin around all day long during the storm! I was so happy to
finally have snow!!! My Californian companion was not to happy about
it though. He doesn't like the cold.
    Sunday church got cancelled. It threw us off a ton and we didn't
know what to do. Super annoying. So we just took off and started
visiting people. What started off as a super down day were we didn't
know what to do turned into one of the most effective days of my
mission! We ended up getting 2 super solid new investigators and put
both of them on Baptismal date in the first lesson! I have never done
that!!! It was super sweet!
    Now last but definitely not least... transfer call was last night
and I found out I am staying in Englewood for another 6 weeks. But I
am getting a new companion. Elder Peterson from Draper, Ut. Now I
freakin love this guy, we are already best friends out here and we
know a bunch of the same people back at home. So it'll be a good
transfer. Especially because there is so much going on here and so
many people to bring to the waters of baptism!
    Love you all and thank you so much for your support! I hope you
have a great 2nd week of January!

Happy New Year!!

  Happy New Years everybody! I hope you all had wonderful parties to
go to! I didn't, you know, because I'm a missionary and stuff.
So this week was Exchange and meeting madness.... I finally feel like
a Zone Leader!
    On Tuesday I got to go on exchange with Elder Clark! He's from
Colorado and he's one of my new best friends. Both of us have an
obsession with Lord of the Rings so it clicked from the beginning.
He's in a Spanish area so I got to sit through some Spanish lessons
again. It was really bad this time because the one lesson we taught
was to a Dominican lady.... like straight off the plane Dominican....
now if anyone is familiar with their dialect it's rapid fire fast and
they don't pronounce half their letters. Now my lack of understanding
Spanish and Elder Clark being a newer missionary put us in a bad
place. She was talking to us faster then a machine gun telling us some
kind of story about how she felt about Catholics and God. We were
completely lost to her story. But because we are lucky people she
finished her rant with a random comment. "Por que no misioneras en
Dominican Republic?" So we were able to answer and survive the lesson,
I also met the demon dog that lived next door.
    And then I went on a second exchange with Elder Miller from Neola,
Utah.... he's a super farmer handyman guy. Super cool! We talked a lot
about smithing........
    Now for the Meeting madness! Friday was Mission Leader Council.
Where all the Zone leaders and Sister Training Leaders sit down with
president for 5 hours and talk about how to lead the mission. Then on
Saturday we had interviews with President. And the twist was that we
have to give the training's to the missionaries waiting to be
interviewed. So we had to give the the same training 4 times as the
missionaries cycled through their interviews.... It was pretty rough.
I was absolutely exhausted.
    So between 2 exchanges and 2 really long meetings, and now I have
to plan another training for tomorrow.... I'm absolutely tired.
    Happy new year everybody, I'mma take a nap..... oh wait, got no
time for that.

Merry Christmas!!!

12-26-16

 Merry Christmas everybody! I hope you all had a wonderful
Christmas and are psyching up for a party filled New Years!
    This week was pretty crazy for us. We are in a super duper finding
stage so we've been out knocking doors Day and night. We've been using
this new door approach that I've never tried before. It's a 10
question survey that leads us into talking to people about the Book of
Mormon. It's been working pretty well.
    We went out knocking almost all of Christmas Eve and it actually
worked! We managed to get 14 new investigators out of it! I've never
seen that much success my entire mission. We honestly in one day got
more people to listen to us door knocking then I've had in the rest of
my mission combined. It was ridiculous!
     We got to have a Christmas Eve and a Christmas dinner from the
members. It was super great! The Christmas Eve one was super Italian
with some accents from other countries. It was crazy good. Christmas
Dinner was super good too! I love food, and I'm not even fat yet.
     Me and Elder Trask got the opportunity to go back to Clinton
Yesterday too. One of my old investigators there was getting baptized
so we got to be there. It was refreshing to see all the people that I
love in the Clinton Ward. It was a good Christmas present.
     Another great present! We got a new car! 2017 Subaru Legacy...
it's Super Fancy! And it can practically drive itself.
     I don't know what else to talk about so I'll stop now.
Merry Christmas everybody! Thanks for all the love and support. Talk
to you next year... he he he.


                      Elder Anthony Sleigh Hicks
                  New Jersey Morristown Mission

The Wimmers Christmas puppy named Sleigh

Christmas Stuff!!

Hello my dear Subjects! Merry Christmas Season!!!
This week has been crazy! With so much partying , Singing, and
teaching it's crazy!
Early on in the week I went on exchange with Elder Hills. He's a super
cool young missionary and we got to sit down and teach a really good
lesson on the Gospel of Jesus Christ to an awesome investigator who
had a ton of really good questions!
And then later in the week we hit the party weekend!
      Friday we had the all mission Christmas concert in which we had
Bart Oates a former NFL Center and 2 time Super Bowl winner who just
happens to be a bishop here speak to us which was cool! And then we
had the party with a few funny skits! I got to be a part of the best
one.... just saying, the lyrics are provided below though a lot of
them are mission jokes that you might not understand.
     Friday night we also got to be on exchange and I went up to New
York with Elder Jean-Baptiste, who is from Haiti. He is the most
entertaining I've seen in a long time! I got the opportunity to watch
him open his Christmas presents and he was like a little child
screaming with joy at the smallest gift. He was an amazing example of
charity to me too. Immediately after opening all his gifts he started
divvying stuff out to give to some of the homeless people in the area.
He then handed me a tie and a pair of socks that he got and said they
were for me. Then he put a tie and a pair of socks aside for his
companion without even a thought. It was really heartwarming to see.
     Saturday we had our ward Christmas party which was really fun and
we had a few investigators there which is super sweet!
       Sunday was the English Missionary Fireside. It was absolutely
amazing! I love singing Christmas music and I got the chance to be a
part of 3 different musical numbers that all went super well and it's
crazy how blessed my voice has become.... 10 months ago I couldn't
sing tenor without hurting myself but yesterday I sang Joy to the
world in Alto for a couple practices just to see if I could.... so...
pride.
        I also got to see some of the people back from Clinton that I
love so stinkin dearly!
So my week has been pretty good! Christmas is coming up and I'm
excited for all the joy that people have this next week though I will
miss all the ridiculous parties our family does.

Thankyou all so much for the great support you give me, and thankyou
to those who sent cards and gifts! And to those that didn't, I
understand, I wouldn't send one either ;)

                      Elder Anthony Sleigh Hicks
                  New Jersey Morristown Mission

Faith to Find!!!

So, I hate knocking doors..... but guess what we did a lot of this
last week? We knocked doors.... and it was Great!!!!
   Something we've been working on a lot in the mission over that last
couple of weeks is Faith. There are many areas in the mission where
missionaries have fallen into the depressive ideals that include such
statements as "This area is dead.... There are no prepared people
here.... This area doesn't baptize.... Etc" you know that kind of
thing... I know, I've been there. I've said some of those things.
   The missions goal is to have a paradigm shift. We need to have the
"Faith to Find"
So me and Elder Trask have been putting a ton of work into finding new
investigators through everything! Members, door knocking, street
contacting, everything!. And it's working!!!! We have found a bunch of
people and there is a ton of potential here!
   The cold has arrived and it has snowed twice this week! It is
definitely looking like this winter is going to be better then the
last one. Not like last years joke of being 70 degrees on Christmas
day. Though my companion complains a lot about the cold. He's a
California surfer boy so he ain't got no winter layers on his body.

Cool experience for the week. I went on exchange in Passaic with Elder
Hunt. It is a spanish area so I wasn't super involved in the lessons
but during one lesson I felt prompted to share my testimony about the
Plan of Salvation and I was blessed to have wifi so I typed out a huge
paragraph on Google Translate super fast while Elder Hunt was teaching
and I was able to share my Testimony in Spanish.

Sorry I got no serious stories with details but it's just been hectic.
Thank you guys for all the help and support you give me! Happy holidays
and good tidings
Farewell.

Englewoood... Responsibilities.... I'm Tired...

Hallloooo!
Good Morning my dear Monday subjects!
This week has been super hectic! Elder Trask my new companion is a
crazy awesome missionary, and he works super hard.... and I have spent
to much time in an area that you get to sit in your cushy car all day
long. If you connect the dots there, I'm tired! We had an awesome week
of teaching people and meetings!
My one experience that I really do want to share is of a Baptism that
we had yesterday.... So I got transferred into this baptism, I had
only met them once before the baptism so it was interesting....
But anyways, to the story... So we had to fill the baptismal font, and
our Bishop told us that it would only take an hour..... For some
reason we believed him. The baptism was supposed to start at 1:15. But
at that time the baptismal font was only a foot deep.... not good
right, so me and my companion this whole time are using a big garbage
can and filling it with water from the custodial closet and dumping it
in to the font. We did that for forty five minutes until my companion
had to go change for the baptism, so I stayed back there with another
missionary continuing to fill it up all through the beginning of the
program. So on the other side of the doors we hear people singing and
the ward missionary leader talking and welcoming everyone and the
baptismal talk starts. We finally get it up to a reasonable depth and
run out to be in the room for the baptism. It all worked out in the
end and everyone was happy... but the lesson for the day is
preparation!
Thankyou for all your support! You guys are super awesome!

                      Elder Anthony Sleigh Hicks
                  New Jersey Morristown Mission

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

 Mom..."Are you wearing camo leggings"

Elder Hicks..."Yes.... I am... it's under armor leggings"

 Thanksgiving.....bacon wrapped turkey!!!

 Joyeux Noel Interfaith Benefit Christmas Concert

 

Silent Night with Brian Gallacher on piano

 Hunterdon Harmonizers

 

 Saying Goodbye to the Wimmers