cool title

I knew coming out here I would gain a testimony, but I didn’t think I would gain as much weight. During district meeting I ripped my suit pants which really was just so sad because they were my favorite pants and is also a sign I’m getting fat. Other than that it was a pretty great week out here. Monday we had a pretty relaxed p-day, and after p-day we visited with people and saw some less-actives. We got a call from the AP's and they told us we had to move out of the apartment that night so that wasn’t fun. We had to move back to the super ghetto cigarette apartment.

Tuesday we had an awesome lesson with one of our less-active families who are trying to go to the temple. We talked about the temple and the priesthood, and the dad got pretty excited about it. 

Wednesday, we had a really good time at food bank and talked to a lot of people. We talked to this husband and wife and they said we could come by and visit the next day. We were on exchanges so I was with Elder McGill. We biked all over and had a lesson with one of our investigators Maria, we talked about prophets and invited her to watch conference and she said she would if she didn’t have work. We then were leaving and saw these two white people so of course we had to talk to them and they said "hey our vice principal is a Mormon" so we went and talked to him, he was a really cool guy. We then went over to a member’s house for dinner, she can only feed two of us, we had an amazing dinner and it was fun. We then went to the church and found out we weren’t supposed to eat with her this week but next week ahahha. We played volleyball with all the youth and members it was super fun. We had a less active family come and play which was awesome to see them. 

Thursday, we had a long day of planning, during planning we got a call from the AP's in Mexico telling us about a member who is about to move here. She then called us and asked us to go and visit her son in jail. We spent a good hour driving in the wrong direction hahaha. We didn’t get to visit him. We then went and tried one of our new investigators named Norma, she was outside and said she was busy but we talked with her anyways and we talked about the Plan of Salvation, she loved it. We went to visit the family from the food bank and the house they told us was empty so we were walking around and we saw this old guy and asked if they still lived there and he just got mad at us and told us we shouldn’t be there and that he was going to call the comps and then started waving his bat at us. 

Friday, we had a pretty good district meeting, and then after we had lots of time which is nice, we got to ride bikes around and tried all of our investigators and tried talking to people. No one was home but we got to talk to a lot of people which was really nice. It was super hot though which wasn’t fun.

Saturday, we did service all day for this one lady, she has a son who is in high school that is a super cool kid and a super good member missionary, we got to talk to him and do service. We then went and visited a couple people till dinner.  We ate at the church, and while we were there they were watching the women’s session but only 3 people were there, and two were the missionaries. 

Sunday, bladdimir texted us again with a lame excuse saying he couldn’t come again. We had pretty good lessons, we had to watch a couple of little kids so the parents could go to gospel principals, and it was pretty fun. We went out with a member and tried tons of people but no one was home, we then tried the Vargas family and they were home. We talked to them, and mid-lesson a mouse trap goes off and the mouse got away and I had to step on it. Well good week out here. Love everyone. 

Pics of us just being boys.

OKC Animal Rescue

This week was super fun, and exciting. We had lots of fun this week. I don’t remember too much of the beginning of the week, but I remember a lot of the end. On Wednesday, we got to talk to bladdimir about baptism and asked him if he still wanted to be baptized, he has been having some doubts. I was really stressing about what we could say to help him and what would make him want to be baptized but we can’t make people do anything they have to do it on their own. He told us that he wants to still be baptized but wants to wait till he is 16 in November. We have been able to talk to some of the other friends of bladdimir and are going to try and start teaching some of them, there are some pretty nice ones and then others who aren’t the nicest kids yet. 

Thursday we had zone conference, it was super helpful and awesome, super long too. President talked about how to work better with members, and how to work with different personalities. He also put some new things in that we are supposed to do, one of them is called lightening visits. All we are supposed to do is go to a member’s house and tell them about a miracle and we can’t go in and can’t be longer than 5 minutes. So after zone conference, elder Q figured we would go try it, we went to a members house and they tried to invite us in a good 10 times but we kept turning down and finally we had the whole family outside and we told them about a guy we find, they didn’t have much to say hahah. It was really awkward and I felt weird knocking on someone’s door and kinda bragging about something we did hahaha. 

Friday we had a super strange day, it was district meeting and half the district was sick so there were only a couple of us. We then just visited people until we had to go to the church to help set up for the Mexican Independence day fiesta. The party was sooo fun, we had 2 Spanish branches come so there was a ton of people. Everyone brought food from where they are from, we got to eat some super good food, I felt super fat after and my shirt felt really tight. The members all did these dances and sang songs it was really funny. It was super cool to see and be a part of the culture. 

Saturday we did service all morning, service is really fun always, we helped clean out sheds for the mission. We then went on exchanges because all the leaders of the mission had a meeting with Elder Pearson of the 70, I got to be with elder Rost, who is a Cali boy. As soon as we started the exchange it started to rain extremely hard, we were lucky to be in the car, but couldn’t see anything so we had to pull over and watch the storm. In 10 minutes all the streets were flooded, it started hailing super big hail haha. We sat in the car for about an hour, watching the storm. We then drove to bladdimirs and on the way there we almost got the car stuck in water, all the streets had flooded and had huge puddles of water, it was super fun. We went to dinner with a member and we had the dinner message, and I’m still kinda new so in my terrible Spanish I said "when you eat us, you’re helping god" the guy just looked at me and all the other missionaries just laughed. We then came back to the church to pick up some elders and we found a stray dog so we started playing with it and put it in the car, and then put some killer shades on it. 

Sunday was awesome, but none of our investigators came to church which was super lame. We had a really good dinner and had an amazing dinner message with a member. We went to visit one of my favorite families. La familia Vargas, they are a less active family, they are super kind and funny. We went over and visited and talked about getting them to the temple, they are working soo hard and Hermana is doing all she can to get there. She was telling us how hard she tries to get to church. It made me soo happy to see how strong her desire to attend church and read was. She knows and wants the blessing that come from going to church and wants those blessing for her and her family. 

Today we woke up and went and tried to do laundry at another missionary apartment but couldn’t so we called a member and she said we could come over so we were driving over to her house and we say this little puppy running in the street almost getting hit, so we stopped the car and the traffic and elder Q ran around in the street trying to catch this dog, Hahah he finally caught it and we brought it in the car and took it to the members house and played with it as we did laundry.

The cool down

This week was a super fast and fun week. The weather has finally started to cool down and has made it fun and enjoyable to be outside. With the weather we have been out biking and walking tons which has just been sooo much fun and awesome. We are always talking to people and always finding people to talk to but, everyone says they have their own church and don’t want to change. It’s been really hard for me, we have been finding people and have been giving them to other people and we hear about their awesome stories and how they are having so much luck and we aren’t having too much success. It kinda brought me down and I thought I wasn’t a good teacher and I didn’t feel like I was doing a very good job.

One morning I said and pray and asked for help and realized that I was comparing myself to others and it was bringing me down, so I had to stop comparing and think of all the thinks I’m doing right. It’s been a challenge but it’s been good and I have been much happier. This week was really fun, we had lots of fun, I love being able to walk around and just talk to people, even though some of them aren’t the nicest or want to listen, we do find people who will listen. This week we found lots of interesting people which is my favorite part about the area I live in, we have so many unique people. One day we were walking around and talked to this lady who had 4 inch long finger nails. Not too much long later we knocked this door and we talked to this really nice lady who said she was read the BOM and so we asked if we could come back and talk to her about it, and she said "no I don’t need you guys to, I’ll just ask god" it was kinda strange but cool.

We talked to this old guy, who was super nice and gave us a cantaloupe and said to come back the next day so we did and we were talking to him and he starts eating these chili peppers, He had tons of them growing in his front yard. He was growing the 4 hottest peppers in the world in his front yard, we started talking about them with him and then he says he always has fighting chickens in the backyard ahahah. We went back there and there were hundreds of chickens, I loved it, I was chasing them around trying to catch them. We also had some rough days this week, we finally got to talk to bladdimirs dad, and he said he just wants to make sure bladdimir is ready, so we were super stoked about that. We then talked to bladdimir and he goes I’m not sure if I want to be baptized!! Like what the heck, it was sooo hard for me so we invited him to pray about it. We also got a new branch presidency which is awesome and is going to be sooo good. 

Well I’m loving it out here, there are so much ups and downs but it is soo much fun. Thank you for everything.