Monday, August 25, 2014

Week 40 in Mesquite, Texas

This week has been a bit hard. We have basically taught all of our new members the new member lessons. So we are going back into finding mode. More knocking doors. Knocking doors is a bit interesting with Elder M, because even though he can speak English his accent is sometimes very hard to understand for some people. He wants to teach in Spanish but our work is pure English and I can tell it bothers him sometimes. It is also a lot different than Spanish work because you can go a whole day without a single lesson and in Spanish work someone will let you in. He also doesn't speak much when we did have lessons so I have had to step up and take the lead in teaching which is kind of hard sometimes. I still stutter a lot during the lesson, but this transfer will help me improve my teaching.  I get to speak a lot of Spanish to my companion so I will learn to speak better.
Elder M has been in the mission for 7 months. He lived in Jersey all through high school and know English OK. It is hard sometimes for others to understand him. He really wants to be doing Spanish work and he is kind of bummed right now. This might sound funny but I don't know what is faster to do with him, walk everywhere or bike. It frustrates me sometimes but I need to be more patient with him.
J is still set for the 30th. He is so excited for it. Elder H is comeing back for the baptism.

I am glad that Mikaela is getting some practice with her car before mine. and i am glad to hear that she can drive forward. Now all I need to worry about is her getting fender benders in the parking lots backing out, but it won't do as much damage to my car.

So they assigned me to teach the Gospel Doctrine class next week. It is lesson 32. The last lesson I had to do was last week in elders quorum and they told me at 7 the night before just right before transfers. I stumbled so much through the lesson and I spaced out for like 2 min. If it weren't for the elders quorum president I would have ended like 20 min early. I was so embarrassed.

We have begun a hunt to track down all the less actives and unknowns in our ward. It will be a lot of work but hopefully something will come out of it. Other than that not much exciting things have happened other than my companion almost burning the apartment to the ground. He was making some popcorn in a pot and he put oil in the pot. When the popcorn was done he left the pot on and after a while it caught on fire. I ran over and turned the stove off and put a lid on the pot and then Elder M took the pot and was going to pour it in the sink and pour water in it but i stopped him in time. The lid was too big for the pot and it took a couple of seconds before the fire burned out. The worst part was that the apartment was filled with smoke. We had to let it air out for like an hour. It was a good thing it was a planning day. 

Well that was my funny story for the week. Hope your week was great and have a great week.
 
New companion

Transfers
 
 

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Week 39 in Mesquite, Texas

So transfer calls happened last saturday and I have sad news, Elder H is leaving me. I will be getting Elder M. He is from Peru. I have served around him in Carrollton. I am exited.
So last saturday we had a baptism, S K. The room was pack full of people. She wanted to be baptized before elder H left and we did it right in time. It was a great experience to see and the spirit was really strong there. This month I will have at least 1 more baptism. His name is J and his date is on the 30th.
 
You will love this one, we have more garbage chairs in our apartment. I forgot to take pictures but I will next time. One is an office chair and one is a small leather chair.
 
This last week not much has happened. We have been working hard on our new map and on our ward directory to get everything planned. I have a few more things that I need to do and then we will start teaching everyone.
I hope everyone had a great week.

love ya.

Baptism
Another dumpster chair.

Monday, August 11, 2014

Week 38 in Mesquite Texas

If there was a hashtag for the week it would be #dumbdecision115.
So this week we had a baptismal interview for a investigator named S. She had been comming to church for a couple of months. Some of her friends are members and they invited her and she has been coming ever since. So last Wednesday we had a lesson with her and it was over lessons 4 and 5 of Preach My Gospel and at the end she asked when can I get baptized?  We told her whenever you want. She asked Elder H when is he going to leave because she wants to get baptized before he leaves. We told her we dont know when he is leaving we get calls the Saturday the 16th and she said that she wants to get baptized on Saturday the 16th. So we needed to have her interviewed on Friday. So we had the interview and SHE PASSED! So my next baptism will be this Saturday. Yay
Also we had a zone meeting on Wednesday and they want us working with the ward members more and spend less time knocking doors. So we are going to start focusing more on that. So that night we had a meeting with the bishop and he wants us going through the ward list and cleaning it out and meeting every member. So we wanted to map out every member on a map and so we made a map. We already had a small map on the wall but we wanted it to be bigger so we went to office max and made the map bigger. Then we cut it in half and made the map even bigger. It is now 36 square feet. Then we got it laminated and put it on our wall and all of the missionaries are jealous of our map. #dumbdecision115 (it ended up costing $115)
 
Tell Mikaela to keep trying hard and she will learn. I am just jealous of how skinny she is. I have gotten kind of chubby here. I weighed myself and I weigh 167! A lot more than I weighed before. I have been working and out and taking protein.  I have more muscle.

Elijah was a cool prophet. I like the story of him with the priests. Did you tell the story of Elisha and the Shebears?

The library here is kind of busy and they wont give more time I will see what I can do, but I need to go.
 Oh, by the way lamination is Expensive. #dumbdecision115
Well I hope that you all had a great week.

#dumbdecision$115 



Week 37 in Mesquite, TX

Sorry it has taken me so long to write today. It has been a bit busy. We went to a museum in Dallas called the Pro Museum. It was really cool. They had Fossils there and other interactive things. We went with other missionaries who got tickets for free from a member. There was an exibit there where we could do a 100 foot dash with some athletes and some animals. I raced Jarell Barker and lost. sad. I was just piont 10 seconds from him. Then we went to Hard Rock Cafe and ate there and took some pictures with the guitars there. And now we are e-mailing at SMU. It has been a pretty busy day.
Not much has happened this week. No more crazy costumes and animals. The weather has been really nice. We set the record for the second coldest day in July. The sad news is that it is supposed to start getting hotter this week. They say that we will reach 100 by the end of the week.
We  have been knocking alot of doors this week and a lot of our appointments have dropped. Hopefully this week will be busier.

Hope that you guys had a great week.



Dumpster Chairs


Flash!!!


Trip to museum