Week 8: Happy Thanksgiving!!

Hey everyone!! This week has been pretty great. I've focused more on my personal studies and found a lot to learn from reading the Book of Mormon. Also this week we got 2 people on date for baptisms, so that's exciting. The hardest part though is getting them to come to church. They always have some sort of excuse as to why they can't come. We've also tried getting them to come to a church tour, but they won't even do that. This one guy, Brayan, who's probably in his late teens or early twenties, says that he feels like if he goes to church it should be with his parents and he just doesn't feel comfortable with church. We've tried to teach his parents but Brayan never invites us inside some just have lessons on his cold porch.

The other hard part about teaching Hispanics is that there's always someone different who answers the door and the other person you were going to teach isn't home. So we'll get plenty of new people to teach, but they don't commit.

Also a random experience that happened when we went to go visit some investigators: we were going to a trailer park, like usual, and there were four cop cars near our investigator's trailer. So there were lots of police out too, there were also some guys in military uniform, but when two of the elders went to meet with the investigator, they said that the police were out trying to find someone who had apparently been running around threatening people with a sword. We decided to not stick around for very long.

As for answers to questions about how a companionship of four works, we generally switch off every day. Me and Elder Williams just switch trainers, so he'll be with either Elder Powell or Elder Bradley, and I'll be with the other one. Then the next day we switch. Also we only have one car: a Toyota Corolla. So we generally only use the car and sometimes have members drive two of us so we can cover more ground and have members with us for lessons. We only have three bikes, and the elder who doesn't have one probably won't need one until he gets put in a biking area.

When we teach lessons, two of us will go meet with half of the investigators in the area, and the other two will meet with the other half. But usually we can't even get in the door. They either don't answer or they're not home. We have been getting fed some pretty good food though. When members feed us, they have to feed four of us at a time, but that's now changing. We had zone conference this week and one of the changes is that we won't be getting fed by members in their homes Monday through Friday. They either drop it off to us, we pick it up, or we just make our own food. On Saturday and Sunday they want us to have dinner with less active families, part member families, but if that doesn't happen then we can get it from members. It's putting more focus on the ward mission leader since he has to coordinate these things.

It can be difficult having to work some things out between four instead of just two, but it's definitely nice to have more people. Elder Powell is a funny guy who feels strongly about missionary work and his purpose. He's a wrestler and a football player. Elder Bradley is also pretty witty. He's very diligent and knows a lot about Spanish, how to teach lessons, etc. And Elder Williams loves to talk and fix things. He's almost always talking even if he isn't talking to anyone in particular. And if he's not talking, he's fixing something: food, tables, bikes, organizing closets, cleaning.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Elder Williams making an apron from a pair of ruined dress pants he found.

Meme that Elder Powell made of Brother Saucedo. Brother Saucedo is an awesome guy who loves talking about ionized water, BYU (he's never been, but he's taking online classes), and about the blessings he can get by helping us with lessons, giving us water, or anything else.

My small desk and bed. I used to just have the stool as my desk, but now I got an upgrade and have a bigger desk.

Service project we did Friday morning for a witch who hosted a coven focused on earth based paganism. (Also I'm not sure what Elder Bradley is trying to do in the very back. He's either dancing, doing some martial arts thing, or raking the leaves. Can't tell)