Monday, April 24th, 2017:
Today was a good p-day. We
planned at 6:50, did studies at 7:30, and kicked off p-day with cleaning. It
took about an hour and a half, but our fridge was disgusting so we cleaned it
thoroughly for 30 minutes. We drove down to Midvale and went to Mr. Mac. I'm
finally getting my clothes tailored. It will be so nice to not rely on a belt
to keep my pants up! While there, we got our other shopping done. In addition
to Walmart, we visit a store that was closing in six days. I scored a sweet tie
for cheap and two cables. I also picked up a "USA" sign for Elder
Gudmundsen.
We ate Chipotle for lunch at emailing. I
thought, from the receipt, that one of my gift cards was worth $18; however,
that was the balance due. It was only worth two dollars. I used up my gift
cards and owed $11, but a really nice employee paid the rest for us. So, the
five of us went to emailing. At emailing, I accidentally sent my weekly email
to myself instead of to my family. Fortunately, I got permission to send it
later. Right after, we played basketball in the gym. A few other companionships
showed up and we played knockout, which I did surprisingly well at.
Tuesday, April 25th, 2017:
We had an amazing zone conference on
revelation; I took many notes. One of the things that stood out to me is how
delicate the process is for receiving revelation. We'll only get all the
revelation we need as we actively reflect on how to represent Jesus Christ and
how we go about doing missionary work. It tied in well to my goals of a focused
and conscious frame of mind.
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| Wasatch Zone, April 25, 2017 |
After zone conference, I picked up my
crockpot so Elder McKee could use the one I got from the mission. We also
searched for the bike my uncle Art sent down, but couldn't find it at the time.
Elder Gudmundsen forgot he had a bike at the office, so he got it and will try
to restore it to working order. The senior missionary over biking, Elder
Taylor, found the bike after we left and give us a call, so we will pick it up
later.
I got two packages at zone conference;
one from my parents and one from my grandparents. Both of them had all sorts of
nuts, protein bars, candy, and other snacks, which was awesome. My parents also
sent me some clothes and a few ties. Well, "sent" isn't the right
word because my parents were in Utah to help Chelsea and Josh move. They
dropped it off and met with my mission president. I'm so grateful,
mostly for them thinking of me!
Getting all set from zone conference took
us to dinner. The couple who had us over both cook; we had tenderloin with a
really good "blueberry catsup" (a blueberry sauce). We stayed for a
little while longer because Elder Gudmundsen wanted help fixing his bike and they
had a good set of equipment for it. After dinner, we went to English class,
checked in at basketball, and went home.
Wednesday, April 26th, 2017:
Elder Gudmundsen woke up with a headache,
so between that, our normal studies, lunch, and an MLS meeting, we found
ourselves at 2:45 pm. The MLS meeting went really well, though; everyone was
involved and we all checked in.
We walked over to the church building
near our apartment to email the dinner calendars to Brother Wheeler (we had the
wrong address before). While there, we got a call from Brother Wheeler
introducing us to an idea – practicing lessons at member’s houses – and he
wanted to tell our stake's ward mission leaders about. Elder
Gudmundsen was livid, though: after the call we talked. His last area had
something similar: they asked members if they could come over and roleplay,
having them practice their teaching skills, but the result was the members got
nothing from i Elder Gudmundsen also explained the idea of going by the members
and teaching the lessons differently to help them see how blessed they are by
the gospel and encourage them to share with friends. With the slight
adjustment, these lessons would produce much better results.
As we were walking back, I saw a black
standard poodle. We talked with his owner, Jim. As we talked to Jim,
we realized he was somewhat drunk. He understood the gospel, but he understood
it without the spirit. He wanted to go into business with us making
a modern English version of the Book of Mormon. If you can remember
back to when I talked about having a "higher" testimony and a
"lower" testimony, it was like Jim had only a lower testimony. He
only looked at the "real world" effects of membership in the church
and didn't even discuss a belief in God. He understood everything
rationally. It was one of the oddest conversations I've had on
my whole mission.
Also, petting the dog--named Norm--felt
just like petting my dog, Nephi. It was a very nice and familiar
feeling.
We tried to contact a few people and
found Leigh and Jason again! They were both home. We got Jason's
new phone number and gave him some of our bread. I'm glad Elder
Gudmundsen could actually meet him. We were able to contact a few other people
too. I'm so happy. It's been too long since we've even gone to
contact people we didn't know before.
After
those visits, we had a correlation meeting with a ward mission leader, followed
by our large monthly stake meeting. I can't believe it's already been
another month.
Thursday, April 27th, 2017:
Intermingled in our morning studies was
Elder Gudmundsen getting another headache. Eventually, we talked about how he
felt. We also managed to get a referral by phone; we're planning to contact her
next week.
For lunch, I had grilled cheese and
tomato soup. I got real block cheese last Monday and I've gone
through about half a pound of it already. I think I was going
through it because I haven't had real cheese in a while, so I don't plan to
keep eating that much.
We had weekly planning, followed by
dinner, more planning, and a lesson with a young couple in the Emigration
Canyon Ward. We ended up being late to a meeting because the ward mission
leader asked us to move it earlier than what we planned. After the meeting, we
tried a few more doors, dropped off some money at the member's house who lets
us buy the speakers, and headed home.
Friday, April 28th, 2017:
For morning exercise we ran around the
block. After that we had studies, prepared for district lunch, and rearranged
our apartment.
We had pancakes for district lunch. I
went on exchanges with Elder Wehle after lunch. We talked about how he's going
home soon, his plans for the future, and he talked about video games. Since
I had previously talked to him about video games, I found it wasn't as fun this
time. I believe I've moved past the point where I want to use my
time on my mission to talk about video games.
The exchange themselves were great; we did
a lot of good work together. Starting the exchanges took a while,
though. I really wish that we could be a little more efficient. Elder
Gudmundsen has started "we're in no hurry, man" to me when I want to
go and do other things. Normally we have no set appointments, but I
still want to go and find people. I feel like I've gotten better at getting
along with Elder Gudmundsen (and other missionaries in general), but sometimes
I really don't know what to think.
Saturday, April 29th, 2017:
Elder Wehle and I locked ourselves in my
room to prevent distractions among the four of us. From other times
we were on exchanges, we found that just the two of us studying together made our
studies were remarkably better. While it was my idea, Elder Wehle
went along with it.
After studies, we tried to visit a few
more people. We ended up then going back to the apartment and eating lunch.
After lunch, we went to a few different yard sales to contact people. The first
one was a nice yard sale, but there weren't too many people to talk to so
nothing much happened. The other one was an estate sale, but people
were not very friendly there so we just left. I also I got a mirror,
a lamp, a scale, ties, a box of recipes, and an HDMI cable.
.
After that, we went back and finished our
exchanges by about 3:30. We finished rearranging our room by moving some
couches. It looks much better now.
We then went to a meeting at one of our
ward mission leader's houses. While we were late for the meeting, we
didn't have a lot to report so the meeting didn't have to go too much longer. I
didn't feel great about it, though, as that ward mission leader is very willing
to help us out. We focused more on the ward mission leaders who
wanted to see more things from us before they put more in; if we focused more
on this man's ward we wouldn't have a lot to report at the other meetings. It's
a tricky balance.
For dinner, we ate at a noodle shop in
Chinatown. I got spicy noodles with tofu, bean sprouts, and bok
choi. I don't have a very high spice tolerance, but I've found I
enjoy it. As I've eaten more, my mouth has been more accustomed to
it.
We went to a potsticker party at the
Chinese ward. We were about an hour late because we had to drive
back up to our area from Chinatown, but everyone was outside when we pulled up. The
smoke from the people making potstickers had set off the fire alarms. We
talked to a few people as we waited for the fire department to show up. There
were a lot of people there and everyone helped to make potstickers. If
you didn't know, potstickers used to be my favorite food (and they are still
among my top foods). So this party had a practically unlimited
number of potstickers and I got to learn how to make them. I was in
heaven!
To finish the night, we attended the
final part of a progressive dinner in the Princeton ward. It's one
of their biggest events for nonmembers, but most of them had gone home after
dinner instead of eating desert at the church building. We talked to
a few people, then headed home to bed.
Sunday, April 30th, 2017:
We gave talks in one of the wards this
morning. The talks went really well; the sisters gave their talks,
there was a musical number, then Elder Gudmundsen spoke, and I was left with
only a few minutes. While we were only planning on 7-8 minute talks,
I made mine very dense. I talked about not procrastinating the
blessings we could be having, relating it to my patriarchal blessing and a
story of some members who had to borrow money to pay tithing after they tried
to invest it and lost it. I asked the youth of the ward to repent and
figure out the things they needed to before too much time passed.
I’ve learned that asking people to repent
becomes much less scary once you understand that repentance is a joyful
process.
I had been developing a stomach ache
starting at around 8:30 am, but we still finished the three hour block of
church and the linger longer following the church block. Afterwards,
we went home and I threw up. Because it wasn't a very strong
stomachache, it took a long time for me to actually throw up. While
I had eaten a lot of dumplings last night, I believe my G.I issues were due to
the manner in which they were prepared (there may have been some contamination
because I handled raw meat in the dumpling filling) as opposed to how many I
ate.
I managed to get myself back up so that
we could go and teach the third hour of Emigration Canyon Ward's fifth Sunday
to the youth, but for the rest of the night I was really low on energy. Before
dinner, we went by a member's house to borrow fishing rods so Elder Gudmundsen
could fish on Monday. We tried another door in their ward, but no
one came to the door. For dinner, I had rice, the inside of a roll, and some
Mandarin orange pieces, which really helped me recover. Even still,
it was a hard night. The only reason I decided to keep going was
because we need to visit more people. At first, I only got dressed
and left because I wanted to talk to the youth at church. Besides giving talks,
that's my favorite thing to do as a missionary because I can relate to them
very well. I was tired of not having things to report and I knew I
only wanted to rest, not needed to rest.
Another thing about dinner was that I
recognized the house and family from sometime around Christmas. I've
been in the stake so long that I've been to many of the families' houses twice
(only some of the members sign up to have us over).
After dinner, we decided to visit a
less-active member we've tried to contact for a while. He was home,
but he was playing Skyrim and all his kids were around, so it wasn't the best
time to talk. Elder Gudmundsen played basketball with one of his
kids, and while he did the dad came outside! I talked to him and
found out that he plans his schedule tomorrow, so we may finally be able to set
an appointment. I'm glad we went by.
Jack, Abraham, and their new friend Kevin
asked if we could open the gym so they could play basketball. On our
way over there, the dad of their host family asked if we were going to do that
on a Sunday. He pointed out that most members didn't do that and he
suggested that we shouldn't. We talked to them, so they left to play
at the neighborhood elementary school. They didn't really understand
why we didn't want them to play, but they at least respected it.
After that, we headed into the canyon
(Emigration Canyon) to track down a few different less active members the ward
wanted us to visit. I was pretty out of it by that time. We
went by the assistant ward mission leader, he told us who he might know, we
went by one of those families, and the dad showed us the family's house.
After we finished, we drove home. I
took a warm shower--it was cold outside and I had no energy to really resist
the cold--and then fell into bed.
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| Late April snow |
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| Late April snow! |
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