March 9, 2020

Hey everyone I hope y’all had a great week. 

This week has been really good, On Tuesday we spent like 3 hours at this car place waiting for our car to get an alignment and some other stuff done. We were so bored so we just started walking around to all the stores and fast food places nearby. We walked into a couple of different thrift stores. One of the stores is called EZ pawn and it's a pretty cool thrift store. They have a lot of cool stuff that’s pretty cheap. It's definitely one store I’ll always remember.

On Thursday we had a lot of meetings to go to. It was pretty cool because our whole zone was there of about 29 people. We have like one of the biggest zones in our mission. During that meeting we learned a lot about goals and planning. We learned this acronym called (CPR) or Church, Prayer, Read. We all did a couple of role playing and practice on teaching and improving our skills to invite people to do all those things and it was super fun because we were teaching other missionaries and we were also on the side of an investigator. After that we had our district council and interviews with President Tveten. One of the Missionaries in our district named Elder Tudor gave us training on how to contact people. He gave us this super funny acronym called (SLAP). “We need to slap our everyone!" he said something like that haha. SLAP means Set up a return appointment, Leave something behind, get there Address, Phone number. When we do all those things it helps us people make them a person for our area book and so we can begin teaching them. Ever since that training me and Elder Corry are like" okay let's go slap some people!"haha.  After all the meetings that we had that basically took most of the day me and Elder Corry as well as Elder Tudor and Elder Trythall went to this Mexican Restaurant for dinner. It was supposed to be a dinner appointment but the person works at the restaurant and so we got to eat there for free. The restaurant’s name is (Guerrreos). Their food is so good and we were so full after that haha.

On Friday I finally gave my Book of Mormon away with the picture of my family and testimony of my parents inside. We gave it to this mom with 2 little kids and we talked to her for a little and she seemed to be interested a little and was really nice. When I told her about this specific Book of Mormon she wanted me to keep it instead and get a different one haha. We still gave it to her so it would be more special to her and that she might look at it more. I've had that book since my first zone conference at Christmas so it was awesome finally giving it away. 

I can now say that I have eaten cactus haha. For dinner we went to this member’s house and she served us cactus and rice, beans, and tortillas. The cactus was super weird and had a really different texture and is probably one of the weirdest things I’ve eaten on my mission so far. 

On Saturday Me and Elder Corry made some cinnamon rolls to give to an inactive family we are teaching. We are working really hard to get them to come back to church because they haven't been in 5 years. They also have 2 kids who are at the age to decide if they want to be baptized. When we went to drop them off no one was there and we were trying to decide what we should do. We decided to leave the cinnamon rolls on their porch with a note and send a text to the dad letting him know we stopped by. Like 30 minutes later we got another text telling us thank you so much for taking time for our family and thinking of us, we will see you tomorrow. Me and Elder Corry were so excited and happy. Earlier that day we helped some kids get a skateboard out of a water drain. Elder Corry climbed down this man hole which was so funny. I wish I got a picture, but after when he came out with the skateboard his shirt was so dirty haha. We talked to the kids for a minute and they were so grateful and after we went home so Elder Corry could change haha. The sister missionaries told us about this person they were teaching whose son we just baptized a little bit ago accepted an invitation to baptism. It's so cool to see the blessings of the gospel on people's families because it’s changing their lives and they’re so much happier. I'm really excited for them to continue progressing and living on the covenant path.

On Sunday it was a little tough at first because of daylight savings haha. Now we have to get up a whole hour earlier. We still didn't have a lot of success with people coming to church but hopefully next week for sure. We talked to the family that we gave the cinnamon rolls to and they told us it was because of daylight savings that they missed church. After church we had our weekly planning and that took us a couple hours but we got it done. Elder Tudor and Elder Trythall were super sick and asked us to give them blessings. It was super cool because it was the first real time I have given an actual blessing. They were super grateful and are feeling a lot better now. I gave another blessing to this other person we referred to some other missionaries also. 

Also for today, since yesterday night our kitchen light was leaking and had pool of water in the light cover. Elder Corry noticed it so we called the office and they're getting that taken care of now. It was from a refrigerator in the upstairs apartment. 

In my personal studies for this week I found and liked this scripture and wanted to share it with y'all. It's in Omni 1:26. 

26 And now, my beloved brethren, I would that ye should ^acome unto Christ, who is the Holy One of Israel, and partake of his salvation, and the power of his redemption. Yea, come unto him, and ^boffer your whole souls as an ^coffering unto him, and continue in ^dfasting and praying, and endure to the end; and as the Lord liveth ye will be saved. 

I Testify to all of you that our Heavenly Father lives, Our Savior Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer and if we come unto Him and partake of His salvation we can all live forever with our families, in the name of Jesus Christ Amen. 

I hope you all have a great week and I’ll email y’all again next week!

1. Me and Elder Corry from transfers a couple of weeks ago. 

2. Some really cool temples we drew.

3. The menu from the restaurant named (Guerrero's)

4. Our apartment leaking 😊