So, some stuff went down

It finally happened, I missed a week. But I'm proud I made it 7 months in the field without missing. Anyways, I'll catch you up with last week, and then in another email later, tell you about this week. 

Tuesday Jan 26th: 

We went off to service at a place called Bread of Life. While we were there, a big snow storm came and traffic built up a ton. That made us super late getting home, but the one positive side is the ability to chuck frozen ice at each others' faces. We would roll down the windows and scrap snow off the car and chuck it at each other, haha. And once we got there, I threw one at Elder Slade; it hit him and slid into his pocket. Then he picked it up and threw it back at me, lol. Another exciting thing, an older guy I was teaching who wasn't doing well and was feeling suicidal off and on then stopped responding, just posted on his story for the first time in months, meaning that he's made it after all! I had been so worried.

Wednesday: 

We had my final zone conference in the mission! It was really good, and I had the chance to give my departing testimony with three other sisters. The others were leaving, and I was just getting reassigned, but it was still fun. We practiced rapping the whole ride home, then did a facebook live where we played a game. Elder Meshke chose a topic and then a book of scripture while Elder Slade and I had a race to find a scripture that talks about it. We called it "Bichos and Biscoitos" just 'cause we were eating Oreos while we played. Elder Meshke isn't too familiar with the Bible, so beforehand, I spent 15 minutes explaining that the Old Testament never directly references certain topics, like baptism, and that if he gets a topic like that, use ANYTHING but the Old Testament. But he really wasn't getting it, so I went and wrote on the flash cards OT, if they would be found in the Old Testament. Anyways, we start the game and are a couple rounds in when he pulls out the card baptism, and I kid you not he looks at me, nods, and says "In the Old Testament!" Kkk. So we cut it there and redid that round, but it made for a funny story, haha, and we teased him a bit for it. 

Thursday:

When I do my weekly plans, I do this thing where you look at each person your teaching and write down your vision for that person, then your goals for what that person will do, and your plans to make that happen. Today, Elder Slade showed me the way he implements it, and not only is it super organized but also really effective. I'm excited to bring his way to my new areas. After that we had a member lesson with a guy named Ellwood. He's a really cool guy, and told us his conversion story and about his DJ career. His Book of Mormon has been signed by hundreds of missionaries which is crazy. He accidentally ratted 2 of them out though by telling us a couple missionaries went to his house the other day to see his DJ equipment, which is kinda not allowed during the quarantine. After the day was over we did a video call with our district, and we all played never have I ever. 

Friday:

My last District Council! It was a fun one. I got everyone to sign my transfer journal which was cool. The office elders called me to let me know that my Covid test had accidentally been shipped to the office, so we decided to meet them half way to pick it up. Naturally, we were waiting for them for an extra hour or so, and it would have been faster to just drive to Boston to get it. When we got back, some of the sisters had gotten me a pizza as a going away present which I thought was sweet. We ended the day by going on exchanges, where Elder Meshke and I went with Elder Moody. 

Saturday: 

We had a ton of English classes today. You really only need one person for English class, but normally I would still participate. Except there's no point introducing myself for one class, so while the other Elders did it, I read from my Portuguese Grammar book. I really wish I had been reading it the entire time I've been here. I already know most everything just from talking, but I would have learned a lot faster, haha. It helps a lot of things make sense. We were making cookies tomorrow, so we ran to the store across the street to get flour. Then we realized we didn't have butter when we got home, haha. Luckily the zone leaders did. 

Sunday:

We went to my final Sacrament meeting here. It feels like everything I'm doing these days is the last time, haha. They asked one of us to give a talk, and we convinced Elder Meshke into doing it. He wanted me to, but I kept saying I had already given one in this ward. When we got home, I made the cookies, and we delivered them with some copies of The Book of Mormon, one of whom was to Nancy. She stopped responding to our messages, so in a last ditch effort I wrote my testimony and a message to her in the book, and Elder Meshke highlighted some passages, and we dropped it off at her house. When we got home, we couldn't find my phone anywhere. Which is especially a problem, because I have the sim card. We looked everywhere with no luck. My hotspot was turned on, but the other elders couldn't connect to it, which made us think we had dropped it when delivering stuff. Even worse, I remembered seeing a crazy guy by our car, and the last time I saw my phone was when it was on the dash next to him. And the other elders who were calling me said that someone was active on facebook on my account. After about 30 minutes we got the elders upstairs involved so they could be calling my phone while we drove around. As soon as we left though, we noticed that the car said calling. So I said, wait a minute, turn audio onto bluetooth. And my music started playing. Turns out it slid into the backseat, and my case was black, so it blended in. It was on mute, so it didn't ring, and after everyone disconnected, the hotspot automatically turned off. Guess what, the day's not over. After that, I had my first real Bible Bash. I don't mean to brag, but I'm pretty proud of my knowledge of the Old Testament. It helps that I've actually read it all the way through, haha. So when this lady opens up about how temples are of the devil, I knew how to respond. But I decided her learning would be better than the satisfaction I would get by roasting her. So instead of that I just worked with her as well as I could. I can't lie, by the end of the lesson I had corrected her once or twice, but I was proud of myself for holding back. Her statements included but were not limited to: Moses was the devil; the law of Moses came from the devil; God and Heavenly Father are two people; there's no such thing as the holy spirit; Jesus and Messiah are two different people; almost all the scriptures are inspired by the devil other than Isaiah and much much more. Afterwards Elder Slade was shook, and said it was the best modern example of apostasy he had seen in his mission. She was misquoting and making up scriptures as back-up; kept telling us we were going to hell if we believed that the law of Moses came from God; and kept taking things out of context. At one point, I just told the entire history of the Jews from the coming of Moses to a testimony of the fulfillment of the law by Christ. Crazy night!

October 2020 General Conference

 Tuesday:

Started off the day by getting a ride to the Firestone to pick up our car. The guy there said that he called us, and we didn't answer. We asked him what number he called, and he read off our number but changed the 3 to a 4. It felt good to get the car back, until we had to give it to the Haitian Creole Elders two hours later. We got to work inviting people to general conference. Over the course of the week, we sent messages or wrote letters to 91 people about general conference. And 5 people responded. 

Wednesday: 

The sisters asked us if they could borrow our car at 8:15 AM. Because sisters and elders aren't allowed to drive together, we meet half way in between, so that the person without the car doesn't have to walk as far. But first we had to wake up early and have the Haitian Creole elders bring our car back, then we dropped them back off, only for the sisters to cancel and say they didn't need it anymore, haha. We had service to do after that. I don't think I need to say anything more than it was as fun as always seeing real life people other then quick drive-bys. After the food bank, we got a call from Brother Horta; we talked about getting him in contact with some people we were teaching to help fellowship them. He was really willing and went on to say he had been thinking about what we could do to help get in touch with other members here and introduce them to our friends we are teaching. We suggested that on Mondays we have a family night where the sisters and we can invite the members and their families along with anyone we're teaching, to have some time to study the scriptures together, play some games, and maybe play some get-to-know-you games. He then let us know he would be there to help us for anything. It's so awesome to have such a great guy in our corner, and we are really excited to implement his ideas. 

Thursday:

We had our weekly lesson Augosto and extended the invitation to be baptized. He was really excited, and expressed that it was his intention but, he was just waiting for God to issue a personal calling to him to be baptized. We took that opportunity to remind him about General Conference, and invite him again. After that, we had a call with Francis. He answered and each time just said "oi, oi, oi, oi, oi, oi," until we hung up. Maybe it's just a bad connection? We hope he doesn't start dodging us, but if he does, he does. It's not our job to control peoples actions just try to give them the chance to listen. After that ,we worked on delivering letters for a bit aaaaaand the unthinkable happened. A big truck parked in front of our parking space, and while I was trying to squeeze in I scraped the side of our car. It's not too bad, just the paint, but I took a hit to my pride as I can no longer say that I've got a clean record. After that we had an English class. Our Thursday classes are extremely advanced, so we mainly just practiced talking in Portugese, and one of them asked our favorite movies. Elder Bodily was explaining his, The Count of Monte Cristo, and encouraging them to watch it. I searched it on facebook to see if I could find a picture of the cover to send to the group and the first result was the entire movie just uploaded onto Facebook hahaha. Poor Elder Bodily, so close yet so far. (As missionaries, we don't watch movies for the 2 years we are serving.)

Friday:

We had my second ever zone conference which is so awesome. It's pretty much my only opportunity to talk to missionaries outside of my district, so it was super refreshing. I loved hearing from President Mavromatis. Elder Bodily brought a guitar brother Horta gave to us and preformed a musical number. From there we all got a group picture and went home. I had one interesting experience with the gift of tongues, and it's not what you think. A lot of missionaries have stories of when they were talking and all the sudden they spoke words they didn't even remember and gave the perfect message. I'm going the other way. We were having a lesson, and Elder Bodily did something that annoyed me, and because it was late and I was tired, I spent the rest of the lesson getting angry about it. I fixated it in my mind and the Spirit immediately left. Even though I dropped it, I felt the Spirit's absence. I couldn't understand as well; I could barely respond; and my communication was horrible. In time, I repented and humbled myself, and like putting on a pair of glasses, everything became clearer. It didn't get easier, I just had what I needed to communicate in the lesson. God's blessings are real, and so present that often times we don't even recognize them or take them for granted. But we need to be worthy of the Spirit in order to be blessed. 

Saturday: 

So, first session of General Conference... wow... it was awesome. If anyone reading this hasn't watched it, I'd encourage you to do so TODAY. I made some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies my mom sent me, and they were great. We went in between sessions and gave some away. In the second session, I was taking notes on Elder Utchdorf's talk in a journal my grandma gave me. On the bottom of each page, it has a scripture. Right as Elder Utchdorf was talking about patience through our burdens, and how we will be uplifted through our challenges in the quarantine, I got to the edge of the page where Mosiah 24:15 is shown. "The Lord did strengthen them, that they could bear their burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord." God isn't going to take away our problems every time, but He will strengthen us, and uplift us. 

Sunday: 

After the first session of General Conference, which let me say was another awesome one, we went to drop some cookies off at the Salem Portuguese Elders' apartment. We got about 20 minutes in and Elder Bodily asked, "Did you grab any cookies?" So we had to drive all the way back to get them. By that time traffic picked up, and we got caught driving for an hour and half so we ended up watching conference at their apartment. I can't lie, it was nice to have an excuse to be around other people. During conference in the Sunday afternoon session, several speakers spoke on covenants made in the temple to prepare for missions and life. These covenants are referred to as an endowment. Because I left while the temples were still closed, I never received my temple endowment (something missionaries do in preparation to serve missions). I'm one of about 10 missionaries in our mission who hasn't gone yet. This conference, there was a big theme of unity and faith during hardship. And, Elder (Jeffrey) Holland did not disappoint. A thought occurred to me during his talk that helped me to think about why God allows us to have trials, and doesn't immediately answer our prayers every time. I love going to the gym, I like training, practicing, and most importantly, getting stronger. THE most frustrating experience you can have at the gym, is an overzealous spotter. Your spotter is intended to watch you press or lift a weight. And if you fail, help you track it rather than crush yourself. When you are in the middle of a set, and a spotter takes the weight before you are done, it is extremely annoying. Not only do they deny you the satisfaction of finishing strong, they deny you the growth and increase of strength that comes with activating your muscles. No one wants an overzealous spotter in the gym; it would take away the whole point of going to the gym. So why would we want an overzealous spotter everywhere else. If God always did all of the heavy lifting, we would never get the chance to get spiritually ripped. It was a great talk. Unfortunately, right in the middle of it the, Salem Elders got a phone call. The lady on the other end was not very technologically savvy. So we spent the rest of conference trying to tell her how to flip her camera back around and click the link. Then as soon as we finished helping her, Elder Bodily and I had to rush home for a lesson with a member. We didn't finished the last couple talks, or get to see the new temple assignments.But we have that to look forward to this week! One exciting thing happened after that. After months of hard work... I finished first place in diamond league for duolingo, haha. Funny how having an hour of language study a day can help you learn a language. 

First baptism date, kind of

This is what a typical
day looks like

Monday:

Monday we had a lesson with a lady named Andrine. She had said her goal with meeting with us was to learn how she could draw closer to God. We decided to share James 1 and 2 with her. We talked about how faith without works is dead and about the ways we show our faith. It was an AMAZING first lesson, and a great way to start the week. The next fun thing included a guy named Jay-Ar. He wanted to hear a message, but because he's in the Philippines, we wanted to refer him to missionaries over there. So I used a Facebbok group I'm in whose purpose is to find missionaries all over the world and shared the situation. Within seconds, I had a ton of missionaries helping me. Someone responded and said that was their old mission, then he tagged some other missionaries and said some stuff in Taglog, tagging the appropriate missionaries. All I could think of was the scene in Lord of the Rings where they light the beacons and you see a bunch of lights go on through the skies and Eragorn yells, "The beacons are lit! Gondor calls for aid." 

Tuesday:

We forgot to take the car in to get the oil changed, so we made plans to do it next week. Skip to Monday to see what went down with that cause it's interesting. We went to the Horta's to borrow something. There was no-one home, so we got to eat the cookies we made them which is a plus. We have plenty of work to get ready for General Conference. (This week had a lot of work under the scenes that I won't talk about.) We drove to the Zone Leaders' apartment so they could borrow the car. A sister in our ward gave us money last week to go out to dinner, and we went to a churrasco called Oliveiras. It was so good! We also had great member lessons with brother Wright and Sister Barros. A guy we were talking to asked if we could have a lesson at 9:30. We weren't excited about having one as we had been getting ready for bed, but decided that we needed to meet the schedule of the people whom we are teaching, not the other way around. And I'm glad we did. He started off by asking about 3 Nephi 11. He asked about baptism and how when Christ arrived He gave authority to the apostles. We shared the importance of authority to him and extended the invitation to be baptized, and he accepted. I'm very excited to get to know Francis more in the future and love seeing his relationship with God growing. He's already been baptized two times; first when he was 3, then when he was 18, he wanted to be baptized again because it didn't make sense that he had been baptized before he knew what right and wrong was, not to mention the fact that it wasn't by immersion. So when we explained the importance for authority, he was excited. 

Wednesday:

I talked a little with Jay-Ar, and he had questions about why missionaries can't hold lessons after 10:30. I explained that it was to make sure we were getting enough sleep and talked about the importance of obedience. He responded "Ok, I'll go to bed now to be obedient." Haha. I told him that was a rule for missionaries and not a commandment, and it was all ok. That day we went to pick up our car from the Zone Leaders; while we were there; they gave us a slice of pie, some cookies, and some biscuits. All in all, a fair trade. We also went to do service at our food kitchen. As always, it was great. We have good relationships with all the people there, and it's nice being outside. Once people pick up their food bags, there's an area where they bring out trays of extra fruit they have. 

Thursday:

Nothing much to say here. We had a weekly planning session where we coordinated our efforts and talked about how we would get ready for general conference. We had am amazing lesson with Augosto, and he said he couldn't wait to go to church with us. 

Friday: 

I made good use of the steak from
the members!

We went to district counsel. While we were at the chapel, we got some meat from the fridge. A sister in the ward had accidentally ordered a ton in excess and gave it to the missionaries to share. Man, I didn't mind that at all haha! I made a nice thick steak cooked in mustard and garlic. While we were making the steak however, another member came by and gave us a pizza. No complaints here. We dropped off some cookies to our friend Carlos and went home just in time for a lesson with Pedro M. It was a great lesson, and we helped him download the book of Mormon app on his phones, and showed him how to listen to it. Plus we invited him to general conference, and he was really excited to see what it was all about. 

Saturday:

So funny story from today: we went on a walk to get out of the house, and were waiting at this big intersection. Across the street, there was this old lady with a walker. She decided not to wait for the go sign for pedestrians. She just went for it. As you can imagine, cars had to slam on their breaks, the intersection got clogged up, people started yelling at each other, and slowly but surely, she crossed the street. Finally, the second she made it to the other side, the pedestrian light turned on. Patience isn't for everyone, haha. We have been talking about Augosto and how awesome he is. I went back to look at what our first messages were like. He was the first person I ever talked to on Facebook, so as you can imagine I was pretty new to missionary work. The conversation was as follows (translated) 

"Hi, is everything good?"

"Everything is good" 

"I'm good too, and how are you?"

"Very good also"

"Awesome, so I'm a missionary for the church of Jesus Christ of later day saints, and I'm sharing a message...."

Elder Bodily and I laughed about my lack of tact; he made the comment that I basically just said hi then slapped him in the face with a Book of Mormon. But it seems to be working, haha. We also had a lesson with Willian, but he canceled. We think he might be avoiding us. It's always sad when that happens; you build relationships with people then all the sudden they ghost you out of nowhere. It's definitely going to take getting used to. This week was a very busy week. We did everything we needed to do and worked hard, but we didn't have very much success finding people to teach. Other weeks maybe we do less work and find more people. Sometimes things aren't going to go exactly the way you would hope, circumstances change, and we live in a dynamic world. But as you press forward with faith and trust in God, He will bless you. 

Sunday: 

Big day, we finally got to go to church in person with Augosto, except for the fact that he never showed up. We were on the phone with him before, and he said he was waiting on a call from his boss before leaving. Turns out his boss called him and told him they were understaffed, and he had to come in. He was super apologetic, and we understood, but it was still disappointing. Especially because church was so awesome. One of the people who gave a talk was an old guy whose been a member here for a long time. He shared that it may be his last talk before he dies; he shared his life story and experience with the church. It was so powerful, and I'm so grateful I could be there to listen. At home, I attempted to make Brigadeiro which is a Brazilian dessert that is essentially chocolate balls. The only problem is that they never solidified, so instead I was left with brigadeiro soup. Oh well. We finished the day with a lesson with the Vandanburgs and talked about the upcoming conference with them. They shared that sometimes it could be hard to focus on listening to the talks with so many kids around, but they did their best. We were reading in Jacob, and I remembered that there was a scripture that talks about our intentions and actions being reflected in our work. I decided to read that on the next page. I thought it talked about how we are blessed for bringing forth good fruit, and I wanted to talk about how God just wants us to do our best. BUT, the one I was thinking of was about how if we bring forth evil fruit we are cursed. So essentially they said they were having a hard time focusing in conference, and I told them they would be dammed. Luckily Elder Bodily saved it, and I corrected my mistake, but still pretty funny. 

Monday: 

So, the car. We took it in to get the oil changed, thinking it would be about 30 minutes. The guy in the Firestone was rude, and we could tell why for some reason he didn't like us. We assume it's because we are missionaries. He asked when we need our car by, and we said however long they needed. He responded, "OK. Come back here at 7..." It was 11 in the morning. We didn't need our car; however, so we weren't too worried about it and asked another pair of elders to bring us home. Here's the kicker. At 6:30, we checked and found at their hours are from 8-5; this guy was just trying to get us to come back when they were closed to be a nuisance. I don't know why. We haven't done anything to him, but it's the way of the world, haha. Before my mission, I would have gotten real angry, and probably tried to get him in trouble. As it is right now, I'm trying to remember that I'm a representative of Christ. The people who tortured and killed him showed no mercy, no love, and no kindness. Yet He forgave them anyways. Who would I be, if I took my anger out over something as petty as needing to come a day later to pick up my car. If I go in there and get mad and talk to the manager, all I'm doing is affirming whatever he thinks he knows about me, but maybe if I act with civility and kindness, I can give him a different impression. Then maybe next time he won't act the same way. 

Why Are We Afraid of the Dark?

I made it to Brazil! wink 

 Tuesday:

Tuesday was a monotonous day. Elder Bodily had a long list of people to contact on Facebook. Normally out of 50 or so people we contact, each on of us can find 2-3 interested people at least. Today however, I went through about 70 people and didn't find a single person interested in hearing a message. That was unusual and disappointing. Sadly, it was foreshadowing the pace for the week to a degree. But without a slow week here and there, we can't have a good week where we find more success; success is relative to the negative and positive experiences we have had in the past. We did however have lesson with the Vandanburg family which was awesome! They are a lot of fun to work with, and they wanted to know ways they could share the gospel with friends. We shared Ether 3-4 with them, and talked about the ways that the Lord helped the Brother of Jared overcome his trials and answer his prayers. 

Wednesday: 

We got to do service which is always good. There are a lot of great people, and I love getting to know them. Elder Bodily noticed one guy had a tattoo of the Earth Nation from Avatar the Last Airbender, so we talked to him about that; it was fun. When we were done after about 3 hours, they had a bunch of roll starters (froze raw dough) that they were going to throw away, so we took them and they were AMAZING. Such good rolls, nice and crunchy on the outside, but soft and moist in the inside. As well as that, they gave us some shirts that we could wear when we were working. They were perfect, because the name of the food kitchen is Bread of Life, which also happens to be a name for Christ whose message we are sharing, haha. Now we can rep. the gospel even when we aren't proselytizing. 

Thursday:

We had a lesson with Augosto, and it went really well! We talked about why he wasn't able to attend church, and he said he wanted to go next time. The calls with him are over audio, so we can't actually see each other while we're talking. I like to jump around when I'm teaching. Today we were in Alma, and I was reading random verses ahead and behind as they popped into my head. As I would go to a new verse, I could hear him flipping through to read along. I can't even describe how awesome that is; usually people just prefer that we read verses to them and don't even open their books unless we ask. But he is always willing to read when we ask him. With that, I of course made some celebratory cookies. Then I got a message from a guy named JR who is actually way outside of our area. But he has been researching religions and had been in contact with a friend of mine, Elder Minnick. He started off by asking me an interesting question, "Why are we afraid of the Dark?" He wanted me to answer, but he also wanted me to find scriptures and talks from modern prophets and apostles that answered this question. I was able search "afraid of the dark" in the gospel library app and find dozens of resources to share. When I shared the situation with the missionaries in my district, every single one of them sent me some talk or scripture to help. He doesn't know how many people care that he gets the answers to his questions, and neither do we. But there are legions of angels in heaven cheering for us behind the scenes, and I think that's awesome. He ended up grilling me for 2 1/2 hours about what I believed, and why I believe it, and whether or not I've ever had doubts. It ended with him downloading gospel library to learn for himself. So exciting! He asked if we could close with us saying a prayer, so we quickly called and said one together. I'm still in contact with him, and he's making progress answering his questions about life. From there, the big event of the day were exchanges with the Zone Leaders (we switch companions for the day to learn from someone new). It was a lot of fun, and very productive. I was with Elder Foster. It turns out he likes to read, so at the end, he and I got to nerd out a bit about Wheel of Time, Stormlight Archive, and Jack Reacher. 

Friday:

We started off with District counsel, then jumped straight into a technology training still at the church. Afterwards, we went home and worked on contacting interested people. It was a pretty discouraging contact session, but we got a message from a lady in our ward. She was going to bring us food, but didn't have time so she was gonna give us some money for food. When she got here she gave us $20 dollars! $40 is half of what we budget for every two weeks of groceries, haha. Looks like we are going to be able to eat out one of these days, and we are excited. 

Saturday:

We woke up to go to a park and do some pull ups, and on our way back we got a text from some sisters in our area. They had asked to borrow the car the day before, and we completely spaced it. So we hurried and met them at a high school parking lot to give them the car, then walked home. When we got back, we had some more Facebook time, and you guessed it, not a lot of success... Until I got a message from a lady named Gleisiane. She asked questions about a video I had posted about the plan of salvation, then asked if I had any other videos like that to send her. I showed her the area facebook page and talked to her about our message. It was a great pick me up. I always say that online missionary effort is better for the work, more challenging for the missionary. You are able to reach out to a lot more people, and finding/teaching is much easier, but at the same time it's less gratifying than sharing messages face to face. I do videos on Facebook but am never sure if anyone actually watches or cares about them, so it was so amazing to see that this woman appreciated them so much. It goes to show that you never know the effect you will have on people. Here I was wondering if anyone even wanted to see the videos I was sharing, and they brightened her day. By the same token, she was absently commenting about what she appreciated about them, and it helped to uplift me. If you're not sure whether doing something nice will have a good effect on someone, do it anyways. Better you do something nice that goes unnoticed than miss the opportunity to care for someone in need. After that session, we jogged about a mile back to the high school to pick up our car, came home and called some members of our congregation. We were finally able to get into contact with one guy; the only problem is that he's moved to California, haha. Oh well, we helped him get in contact with the missionaries down there, so it's a victory in my book. 

Sunday:

We had ward council with the Bishop and his clerks. It went really long, but we got some good coordination done. We had a message from the Zone Leaders in the Zone Chat asking every companionship to write and send a poem summarizing the week. I decided to take some initiative and start everyone off with this masterpiece of a haiku,

We had a good week,

We got ignored by people,

But we made cookies. 

Needless to say it was a hit. We got a call from the Sisters asking if we could help them figure out something on zoom for a primary lesson they were teaching, which reminded us that we had a primary lesson to teach in 5 minutes. So we rushed to figure out what the topic for this week was and gave it our best. All things considered, it went really well. We also made a video for some other sisters to post on the mission Facebook page. We then had some more work with members. Needless to say, I was pretty worn out and discouraged. I just said a prayer and talked about how tired and discouraged I was, and asked for help finding the energy and the desire to just do the things that day that I needed to do. I immediately felt refreshed; like I had jumped in a pool of cool water. Out of the people we called, 3/4's of them responded. Though we didn't set up times to talk, we had great conversations and got to know them a little bit. One of them was another guy who had moved without sending his information over, so we helped him with that. He let us know that next time he worked with someone who lived in Everett, he would send them our way, haha. We'll be waiting!

This is what I've been reduced to if I want to workout my chest.

Not letting go of the fact that my mom repeatedly said I'd only be eating taquitos all day every day.

Heading Out!

Ok wow! So busy week, haha. The main take away is that I’m finally done with the MTC. Which means as of Tuesday the 14th, I’m going out to Boston. I'll be sad to leave my district, but at the same time, I’m so excited to go out and officially get started, even if my experience in the field is going to start off behind a screen. My district is so great, and I love all of my fellow missionaries. We have had a lot of fun learning together, and all of their unique testimonies have helped to strengthen mine and allowed me to feel the Spirit more than I ever have before! My teachers are so full of love, and I feel how much they care about us and our experiences. Some tears were shed when everyone made their goodbyes on Friday.
On Friday after our first class, Elder Bailey came over, and we did Irmão Santos’ class together. It was a blast having him over; companion study was great now that we were finally in person, haha. We had a standard day after classes; the next morning I went for my final Bench Press pr and then we played racketball with Taylor. Elder Bailey was a natural. I’m happy we got to finally get a good day to get to know each other as well as do do personal and companion study. I’m really excited to have a companion with me full time that I can get to know and study the scriptures with. 
I have a testimony that having people to rely on in your life and to keep you accountable will not only help you keep up with your goals, it will help you to feel like you are pushing forward and progressing. God blesses us for our efforts and loves each and every one of us despite our many flaws. Just the same we must learn to love each other. I’m reminded of a General Conference Talk that asks the question of what comes first, action or love? If you're having a hard time loving people, sometimes you have to try and serve them. As you make an effort to look for ways to help those around you, you’ll find yourself loving them more and more. I’m not too nervous about how my companions and I will get along, because I know that if I focus on loving them unconditionally, I’ll have a good experience.

Saying goodbye to my boys! I'm sure going to miss them.

Only a week and half left!

My sleeping arrangements at my sister's

This week has been pretty crazy haha. My parents have been traveling so I decided to stay with Jessica and Tyson. So, Monday was in Bountiful; Tuesday was in Farmington; Wednesday I realized I left my contacts in Bountiful and went back up and spent the day then came back; Thursday I left early in the morning to wait in Bountiful to sign for a package that ended up just getting dropped off; Friday back in Farmington; and Saturday loading a trailer up and going back to Bountiful. Kind of Crazy, haha. 

That’s not the only thing though haha.  Elder Bailey and I were planning on hanging out on Wednesday I believe, and then he sent me a text the night before saying he had stomach pain and went to the urgent care and his appendix was twice its normal size. He ended up getting it removed that night; he’s fine now but that’s also pretty exciting haha. 

Classes have been going really great, and Elder Bailey and I had our last TRC with Nathan. It was a lot of fun, and he agreed to  "be baptized". I really enjoyed talking to him, and I’m gonna miss it. Now we switched to a different TRC system where instead of scheduling meetings with people, Mondays and Fridays before class everyone goes to a Zoom room, and we each have 15-20 minutes to teach a lesson. 

This is gonna be a shorter email this week, mainly just because so much has happened that it all blends itself out. One thing I have been grateful this week is the opportunity to end each day with the Book of Mormon. It truly is the best way to refocus and prepare for bed, and it's truly night and day between how I feel about my day with and without scripture study. The scriptures are here to bless our lives, but we have to be willing to use them.