21 Mar 2016

So this has been not that weird of a week but it feels like its been super long. I'm not sure how to explain it. Nothing to out of the usual happened so I guess I'll just get to it.

Monday- Well I guess I lied. Something out of the usual did happen today.  E-mails went normal and we went to Walmart to go shopping. We are just walking down to the breakfast aisle and I hear someone behind me ask, "Elder Hoffman can I talk to you for a second?" I was super confused for a second. I thought maybe I was in trouble.  I don't even know why that crossed my mind, but I'm saying "yes" as I turn around to see that.... ITS ALEXA.  What threw me off  was a couple weeks ago Mikey sent me an e-mail saying that my cousins see me all the time at Wal-mart but would usually avoid me just because they know better. I'm not mad at Alexa though. We talked for maybe 5 minutes and she just had a couple of important things to let me know. One of which is that Gunner is a Ward Mission Leader over in Ammon north. So that's good to know in case President ever thinks to send me over there. The rest of P-day was ok. We just did dodge ball for like the millionth time. Most of the rest of our night we spent at our YSA ward. We have two recent converts that have become less active and we are trying to encourage them to get involved. The theme of there FHE was March Madness. They all made brackets and then we just played some b-ball and ate some pie.

Tuesday- ZONE CONFERENCE!!!! It was totally different then the last one. So normally half of the mission gets together and then President and the AP's rebuke us and we do some activities. Instead this time they did every zone individually, so it was like a zone training but instead of our Zone leaders teaching we had president. It was really nice because it was able to be more personal, instead of trying to teach like 80 missionaries at one time. We did a lot of practices so we have the missionary pamphlets that everyone forgets to use so we put a big focus on making sure we at least hand them out after a lesson. Also, a big focus on teaching by people's needs and stuff like that. During one of the practices, the Elders who were playing the investigators were taking forever to understand what faith is, which was fine some people are like that. Then one of them asked how we gained our faith.  I started to explain my story and I was getting everything built up for sharing the scriptures that basically converted me. The spirit was abiding as I open to the scripture president calls the time and our lesson ends. So we were all kind of bummed that we didn't get to finish. The point is, just because its a practice lesson doesn't mean it can't bring the Spirit. Take role plays seriously! The rest of the day was still really busy. We packed up everything after zone conference and luckily our next lesson was at the V.C. which was about 200 yards from the north stake center. We had 2 lessons there. Both to recent convert families.  We shared the Easter initiative which is just a cool video the church came out with. It was a pretty good day.

Wednesday- This morning in studies I came across a verse in 1 Cor. that talks about if a trumpet makes an unclear sound how will those that hear it know to prepare for battle. So history lesson. Back in the old days of war they didn't have radio so they would use whistles or trumpets to give orders to their armies. If the trumpet doesn't make a clear sound or command then basically people don't know what to think. So the same applies to us when we share the gospel. If we don't teach clearly and make sure people understand our beliefs, then they won't know how to feel the Spirit, prepare to be baptized or even just understand what it is that we believe. I've seen missionaries and I'm probably guilty of it myself, where we don't want to be harsh or bold with the commandments so we give some vague idea of the law of chastity or word of wisdom.  Then people just get confused. I hope the way I explained that made sense. We had a lesson today at the V.C but they didn't show up so we waited around because they never gave a clear answer if they were or were not coming. I took the time to try and find all the scriptures in the Cristus audio. I got like 4 of them from memory, but knowing where these scriptures are has helped them have better meaning to me. When I read them I can picture the Cristus and kind of visualize Christ speaking them which also has help them be more meaningful to me.

Thursday- 5 a.m. wake up call from Bushman.  One of the zone leaders and I decided we would wake up extra early so we could go to the YMCA and work out. I really enjoyed it like doing an actual work out got me up for the day and I was able to stay completely awake in studies! Elder Bushman is one of the funniest guys I know. He's really quiet but he's just awesome. The first day we moved in, we walked inside and he was roping things in the house to destress. He's a cowboy at heart. But if you see pictures of him before his mission he looks like a surfer bum. Anyway back to the day, actually just about nothing happened today. It was a bummer.

Friday- second day at the gym and on the way back home we decided to grab some donuts. We got a dozen so we had enough to share.  When we got back we found out she put like 15 donuts in there so we were stoked to have extra.  Skipping ahead in the day. We went to help Jason on his house. We were there for a couple hours and we found out there is some new light on his legal situation so he may be able to get baptized this month or early April!!!! As we left his place it turns out his mom works at the donut shop and he had three boxes packed of donuts in his fridge so he gave us a box to take home. We ended up with a total of 37ish donuts today and we have no idea what to do with them all. 

Saturday- We were going to leave early this morning and play some b-ball but no one woke up sooooo that didn't really pan out. For studies today I went and found as many references as I could to the wicked or guilty taking the truth to be hard. It happens a lot in the B.o.M.  As random as that study was, I got some good thoughts out of it. Today was pretty great. We went to see Traysen, a kid that we started teaching recently. We've met him a few times and today we stopped by to try and set up a lesson but his step-dad just said, "Oh come on in. I'll get Traysen so you can share a lesson." So we shared on faith and got a nice other lesson. Later that day we were on our way to stop by Wayne's house and we saw Dave outside sweeping his sidewalk so we stopped by to say hi. Turns out he's been making it to church a lot! We always ask our WMLs if they see any of our investigators at church, and in the 26th ward he kept saying no... So we had no idea that he's been progressing. Anyway the ward's been good to him. His teacher got him a quad. He went to a testimony meeting and this 9 year old girl bore her testimony about eternal families (she had just lost her father). Dave is so ready but we've been having trouble with getting lesson times set up, but he's just super golden. So after our visit we went to see Wayne the squirrel guy. Sadly he's still not doing anything or really even willing to progress. He likes us but feels like he's too old to change.

Anyway where the Coppers come in this week. At one of our dinners, I can't remember which one, we were talking and look out the window and see the cops. We walk out to go meet them and they were picking up a gun from the neighbor's yard. The neighbors are out of town, but brother Butler said he saw someone pull out of the driveway so we are wondering if a robbery happened and some one tried to ditch the gun. Like I said its been a weird week.

Hope you all are doing good and I'll talk to ya next week!