28 Mar 2016

This was a pretty good week, but I'm sick of our apartment. I enjoy living with the zone leaders so that's not the problem. I'm fine with sleeping on the couch because that’s what I did back home. The thing that I can’t stand is one of the neighbors is.. well smoking "something". And you can smell it leak in through our bathroom fan. The worst part is we are living in the zone leader’s area, so we can’t even go down there and teach him. I'll have to get the ZL's on top of that. Other than smelling that every morning and night everything’s been pretty good.

Ok so I got like six days behind on my journal because of the stupid puzzles we do every night, so my memory might be a little off on some of these details, that and the smoke is making it hard to remember anything (that’s a joke, no one’s gotten high from it....yet)

Monday- So my companion always has us go out to eat and I just go with it. So while I was shopping today I found out that I have $1.50 to my name at the moment. But that’s not a huge concern I've piled up a lot of food because I plan to eat it every week but then we go out to eat. Plus we have dinners set up almost every night, so food isn't a big struggle. P-day activity was pretty fun, we did get to know you games for the zone, which turned into just telling crazy stories. For instance one elder once was chased down a highway by some lunatic in a truck, a couple of stories of people nearly blowing themselves up, messing with people in a cult until they start chasing you. It was interesting, nothing bad just a lot of interesting stories, after story time we played soccer and stuff and that basically wraps up our prep time. We visited Dave tonight, just to check in on him. We told him we probably wouldn't stay to long, and then we left 2 1/2 hours later. About half way through his girlfriend showed up and the visit turned into a member present, we shared a message and turned in for the night.

Tuesday- So today was different. One of our zone leaders got sick and we didn’t have any appointments, so elder Browning went out with Elder Bushman and did what the zone leaders needed to get done and I sat home with our sick zone leader. We ended up just working on the puzzle and talking. Turns out it was actually really helpful to me to get to know him better and to be able to talk to him. Elder Green and I have had a lot of similar situations so he's been a big help to me. Oh also this morning before the zone leaders had to leave, we went and Elder Browning did some stuff for district meeting and I was just looking through LDS.org. ended up watching a talk by President Uchtdorf, the one about the dandelions, I think its called Lord Is It I. Really good talk, super rebuking and help me realize a few things. I recommend listening to that talk, but don’t take truth to be hard; it is a somewhat rebuking talk. Well I guess it’s only rebuking if you have any of the problems addressed in it.

Wednesday- My study today was looking up everywhere in the B.o.M where people take the truth to be hard, and seeing what comes from that has helped me want to be humble enough to learn. Today was our exchange day with the ZL's and it was really weird in the morning. So exchanges normally start the night before and you switch companions and stuff. But Elder Bushman wouldn’t let me sleep on his bed! So I was still stuck on the couch😞 So anyway we did our P-studies and then comp studies so that was kind of the start of our exchange. But then along with living with us, we are in the same district, so after comp study we went to district meeting. So from last night to about 1:00 the only things that were really an exchange, was daily planning and comp study. District meeting was really good, Spiritual prep was Alma 37 and the focus was small and simple things. Well that's what most of it was on but Alma 37:13 and anywhere else where it talks about prosperity in the land according to obedience, is really applicable to missionaries. Also the reason that verse caught my eye was how it started. "Remember, Remember" Repetition is now one of my favorite things to look for in the scriptures, obviously if several verses talk about the same thing, that thing is important. Now I’ve probably said this next part before, but in Hebrew they don’t use good better best, they repeat, so for instance, verily is good. verily verily is better and verily verily verily is the best. So any time I see a word repeated I pays special attention, and that’s why the remember remember stuck out to me. Anyways Sister Aliasa had training on signs and faith, and I really enjoyed it but there’s one quote she said that I can’t remember for the life of me. After district meeting we had lunch and then finally went on exchanges, it was pretty awesome, the first couple of hours nothing much happened, but then we had a lesson with this Indian guy name Rajiou, and has... I don’t know how to even explain it. So He hates the bible because it’s been translated and written so many times it’s not accurate. He really likes the B.o.M but has not a member. He has this weird problem with Jews, and I don’t know has a quirky guy. But we read 2 Nephi 2 with him and he says yea I never really realized that this book testified of Christ, I didn’t catch that the first time. I don’t think has all there in the head, but he says that he has read the B.o.M before and we couldn’t figure out how you miss things like 2Nephi 25:26, or like all of 3 Nephi. But we just went with it. He's a really nice guy like I said has quirky, but I'm glad I got to meet him. Then we had one of the best lessons I've been a part of, and it was 100% guided by the spirit. We didn’t even know what we were planning to teach her when we went in. So her name is Tatiana and her friend brought her to church and she has no religious background. so she Talked to the Elders for a couple of minutes at church and they set up a lesson time. So we spent about 40 minutes just testifying that Heavenly Father is real and that he loves us. We had to explain who Christ was and that they aren't the same person, and all of that, but I don’t remember who was talking at the time but there was a point where the member and we and she were all holding back tears. She didn’t understand the holy ghost but I know she felt it, and she committed to start praying that night. I wish every lesson could be like that. There’s a lot of it that we can’t explain or really recall what happened because we just spoke by the spirit and I wasn't thinking about what words were coming out, It was literally just opening our mouths and they were filled. To say the least today was Awesome.

I’m running out of time so I’m just going to summerize a few of the things that happened from Thursday to Sunday. We helped an investigator drywall his ceiling, We went to an Easter concert with a recent convert family. I did a huge study on "the devils playbook" (2Nephi 28) It’s one of the few places with a wo wo wo. We gave talks on Easter, and ran a little short on our time, but the bishopric covered for us. Then we visited some shut-ins for Easter.

Awesome week, I learned a lot and I love the mission!

Hope you all enjoy your week!!!!