March 28, 2016

This will be short. I have no excuse.

Our lesson with the Flores got cancelled because their son stopped
living at home. We caught them later in the week and invited them to
watch the Women's session of conference. We've gotten a lot of
referrals all over the place, so we've been busy running around
contacting those. I did exchanges with another elder, and that
was...interesting. We saw on the news about Brussels getting attacked,
and he proposed the idea that the missionary that got injured is
actually a terrorist since he was at 2 other attacks. He defended this
argument for the following 20 minutes. This mission has some
interesting people in it.

We knocked on a door this week and heard them say through the window
"it's church people!" We waited for like 2 minutes, knocked again, and
then heard them say "they're still here!" I shouted "we're the church
people!" When they still wouldn't answer, I started making a mini
snowman on their porch for another 2 minutes. They refused to open the
door, so we left. Just tell us to go away, geez.


Our members also gave us an Easter egg hunt, and we also went with
them Saturday night to "egg" houses, leaving eggs all over the yard
and on the trees. It snowed so much one day this week that we couldn't
leave the house, so we made a snowman elder.

Making tamales

 These birds making out.

 Dope

Our members' dog.

A Lot of Mistakes Spanish

March 21, 2016

We had a better week. At least we got a lot of service hours in. The

Our Center was having their annual fundraiser where they sell handmade

bowls that have been donated by schools and also have soup for lunch.

We helped set up chairs and tables, assemble kits in bags, take

tickets for about 8 hours, and take everything down. On the sign

"leave your ticket here" (with me or my companion), we wrote "with the

handsome one". Not many people noticed it, though. One worker

volunteered to take us out to Starbucks for our help, so we went and

got some coffee-free Starbucks. We took our whitest white girl selfie.

We also helped someone that got evicted load or trash their stuff late
one night when we couldn't find anything to do. That was really hard
to see. This lady could hardly breathe due to age, stress, smoking,
and asthma. She sat in the car while we tried to sort through the
stuff. We also shoveled snow for 2 hours when we got around 5 inches
this week. Most of it has melted, and it's supposed to be in the 70s
today. Tennis will be perfect.

Last week playing tennis, we got kicked off the courts by a bunch of
young kids and their leader who had reserved the court. We talked to
them for a bit, and then we asked if they needed volunteers. They said
they had a huge need. We signed up online, but they haven't called us
yet...? We'll probably see them today since we are going to play
tennis again, so we'll ask them why we haven't heard back. I think
helping kids play sports would be a fun way to give service.

We had 2 good lessons with the Flores family. The second had a member
with us, and that helped a lot. Here is the problem we encounter ALL
THE TIME with Catholic investigators: We teach the first lesson, it
goes well. We talk and emphasize the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, the
priesthood, and the need for all of those. They seem to get it or say
that they do. Sometimes we invite them to be baptized, they say
they've already been baptized, then we re explain the need for
priesthood. We ask again if they'll be baptized, and they avoid the
question. Sometimes they will commit to read the Book of Mormon to get
out of the baptismal commitment. Those that at least commit to read
are usually interested enough to hear the Plan of Salvation. We teach
it, and they say "that's basically what our church teaches!" And I
silently think "no, it's not even close, actually". Then we teach the
third lesson (Gospel of Jesus Christ), re invite them to be baptized,
they say again that the have already been baptized, and we go over the
restoration again. Repeat until they either have a change of heart and
get baptized or lose interest, or they were golden and they skip all
of those above steps and just understand everything and get baptized.

We are hoping that the Flores family is one that either just
understands or has a change of heart and understanding. The girl that
recently got home from her mission in Honduras spoke in sacrament
meeting, and I was cracking up the whole time. She was speaking so
fast, and she could hardly think about what she was saying before she
said it. She kept saying things that sound weird in English but make
sense if you speak Spanish and are translating from Spanish to
English, like "the temple has 3 years", "my companion and I we went",
I accustomed myself", or "we talked to a lot of families inactives".
She also spoke in a very singsongy voice that is characteristic, I'm
told, of that area. The other thing was she would get lost in the
middle of her thought with a word that she didn't remember and took
her a minute to think of, like how she said "We saw this random guy
that had a folle.... Folle.... Pamphlet". It was just really cool for
me to see and understand why she was saying things the way she was.
She is really excited to come and teach with us this Tuesday. We will
see how it goes.

The bowl I got from the Our Center event. He's my happy, chill turtle.

March 14, 2016

These were probably the hardest back to back weeks of my mission. I

don't think I've thought about being home as often my whole mission
other that the first 3 or so months I was out. We have been trying our
best to do everything we need to be doing, and we haven't seen
anything come from it. Other than dinner lessons, we had 23 lessons
scheduled this week. 20 of them didn't happen. Most of the time, we
just showed up and no one was there. So then it was back to finding,
setting lessons with people that acted interested, and then going to
an abandoned house at the time they told us to come by. It has been
discouraging. If I sound bitter this email, it's because I am.

Other negative things:
I forgot how much worse driving in the city is compared to rural
places, like Wyoming. We only almost got in 1 crash this week (her
fault).

After a 45 minute discussion about if I was actually candy free for 3
days, it turns out that under a technical definition, fruit snacks are
candy, so I have not been candy free. However, Milky Ways and Snickers
are not candies since they contain flour and are therefore a cookie,
so I might just have to fall back on those.

It's interesting how members here won't say hi to us or acknowledge we
exist in a restaurant or anywhere in public (we counted at least 2
members/families in restaurants that didn't say hi to us and we know
they saw us), unless, of course, we're in Walmart or Target when it's
not P day, and then every member in the world has to come and politely
introduce themselves to us and ask what we're doing here. The day
you're a perfect member, I'll be a perfect missionary, and for your
information, my companion's shoelace broke, that's why we're here.
Mind your own business or offer to pay for our groceries.

I would share about how our investigators are progressing, who they
are, and what I love about them, but seeing as we don't have any of
those...

On the bright side:
My companion and I get along well. We have been helping each other
stay semi happy these past two difficult weeks. His name is Elder
Segovia, he's 26, and he's from Los Angeles. His parents are from El
Salvador, so his Spanish is pretty good.

I saw a girl who was in the MTC with me on Sunday. She just got back
from her mission in Honduras, and she lives in one of the wards we
cover. It's interesting to think that I would be home right now if I
were a sister missionary.

I am way too cool, from the Corolla with the Tiwi, to the borrowed Arizona, and let's not forget the shoulder bag.

 Ghetto

 My mission yo 

Walking around town in a pink, onesie pajamas with groceries? Sure.

 SOOO freaking Mexican

Easiest way to spot a Mormon family in public.

A Disappointing Start

March 7, 2016

It was quite a discouraging week, especially given the high expectations that I had for this week. We had around 20 lessons scheduled to take place (after much driving around and walking trying to contact old investigators), and all but 7 of them fell through. 6 lessons fell through in one day. Our key indicators were terrible, but this is one of the weeks I've worked the hardest on my mission. Oh well. So, we filled our spare time with tracting, contacting potential investigators, visiting old investigators, and seeing if anyone was interested in our message. I think around 80% of the old investigators houses we went to had a new person living there, so the records weren't much good, but we were able to talk to the current resident and see how they felt about taking missionary lessons. One of the problems with everyone being nice (which is a blessing, because I would rather that everyone be nice instead of mean) is that most people don't really say "no, we aren't interested". Instead, they just tell you to come back at a time they know they'll be gone, so we waste our time driving there and then have to try and find people in the area to visit, which is harder to do when we don't have wifi and a map of where everyone lives. Fortunately, we don't need wifi to tract.

This week, I definitely took advantage of Chick-fil-A and Cafe Rio. I was seriously debating doing some dumpster diving to get more CFA receipts with the surveys for a free chicken sandwich so that I could eat out there a lot more, but I figured that wouldn't be very becoming of a representative of Christ.... I wouldn't consider myself above doing that, though, when I'm home. I might become a janitor in the ougareat just so I can go through and get those receipts. $3.25 saved for 5 minutes of my time: worth it.

Other highlights of this week include helping 2 kids named Sparrow and Phoenix put the chain back on their bike and then having them get scolded for what I'm assuming was talking to strangers, going to church from 9-2:30, and hearing a testimony that Christ is the "world's most eligible bachelor". We cover 5 wards, so I tried to visit them all and get to know some people. We only made it to 4, but it made for a very long fast Sunday. We only have 1 family currently of progressing investigators, the Flores family, and they cancelled our lessons with them twice. We'll just drop by some time when we know they're home and hope they don't tell us they're about to leave. The other interesting thing about this area is that there used to be a Spanish branch, but it was dissolved about a year or two ago. There was so much backbiting, gossiping, and drama that the stake president felt inspired to dissolve the branch and have everyone attend in the English ward whose boundaries they lived in. That has made our work a little difficult, but if it makes everyone be a little more peaceful towards each other....

Pictures from our last two districts

Pictures from our last two districts

View of the mountains from the highway in Longmont.

 A sole flower (tulip?) poking through the grass. I don't know, I thought it was cool.

Two of my homies from the mission on transfer day, Elder Riley and Elder Baum.

Vicarious Chickens

February 29, 2016

It was a good end to the transfer. I'm glad that this transfer wasn't

the one with 7 weeks (this upcoming transfer is though, to make up for

the MTC stay time for native English called missionaries changing from

2 weeks to 3). I will be going to Longmont, CO, SPANISH SPEAKING, with

Elder Segovia, covering all of the Spanish work in the zone, with a

Cafe Rio and a Chick-fil-a within driving distance, Ross, Marshalls, a

big city, lots of people, not in banishment again....everything I've

wanted in a transfer. I'm thrilled. Speaking of good food, we were

spoiled with having steak one night and shrimp and lobster another.

Rich members are great.

This week, we heard that 60 Minutes did a piece on the most dangerous

city/area in the United States, and it's not Chicago, not Detroit, not

Compton, but the Wind River Reservation that everyone in our district

covers. It's probably because they don't really have a police force

out there and competing gangs will light peoples' houses on fire if

they want to. It's a pretty sketchy place out there. Speaking of

sketchy things we did, the other elders locked their keys in their

apartment, so we parked their jeep under the window, cut the screen,

and slid open the unlocked window. I've gotten a lot more experience

with breaking into places than I thought I would get.

The unique thing that we did this week was move a bunch of chicken

coops and chickens. I have never moved a chicken before, so that was

an experience. It was fun running around trying to grab them and put

them in houses. We also caught a few turkeys, which were a lot harder

given that they could fly up over the fences and roost on the roofs on

the coops. The members we were helping out told us to pick a chicken

for ourselves so that we could live on vicariously through them (ok,

that was my thought. They just told us to pick one). I was looking

around at the available chickens, and I saw this big, powerful,

masculine, agile, black and metallic green one. Obviously, I thought,

that's the perfect Little Elder Bacon Jr. I start trying to get it,

and it was so fast and temperamental that I couldn't even get it in a

corner. My companion came over to help corral it, it kept running back

and forth between us two, I missed it a time or two, and then my

COMPANION STOLE HIM FROM ME. He stole Little Elder Bacon Jr. Now it is

named after him. I was looking around for a better chicken, couldn't

find one, so the member told me to go get the "pretty, brown one". It

was this pathetic but pretty, small little hen. So now that's my

chicken. The cute, adorable, weak, small, feminine one.

Not Little Elder Bacon Jr., but a random rooster. I couldn't get the other ones out of the pen. 

My Companion and I Scream from Ice Cream

February 22, 2016

This week was rather adventurous, from hiking up the side of a
mountain to check out a cave, going to Martin's Cove today, and eating
7 1/2 pounds of ice cream, it was a week of challenges. Not the normal
kind, but challenges nonetheless. So, I saw this hole in the wall on
one of the sides of the canyon, and I wanted to know if that was the
cave that we had tried to go spelunking in. So I began to run up the
side of the mountain in full missionary attire, shoes and all. It took
me 12 minutes to get up and about that much to get down, and I have
been sore all week. I'm out of shape. On the bright side, I get to
start 6 months to sexy tomorrow! My companion, fortunately for him,
has longer than that to go, so this week he took the local challenge
aptly named the Bellyache. It is 10 scoops of ice cream, 10 toppings,
whipped cream, and 10 cherries. That's about 7 1/2 pounds of ice
cream. He didn't feel so well afterwards. 

We also gave talks in church, and I got a lot of comments about how I called the ward to
repentance. I guess I did, but it wasn't as bad as people said...

The miracle for this week is that we didn't get sick. We had a lesson
with a family of 9, and a lot of the kids were sick, so they asked if
we could give them blessings. One of the kids has mental disabilities,
and he was running around during the blessings sticking his tongue out
and blowing it and spitting. I know I felt at least a little spit hit
my lip, so the fact that we didn't get sick is a miracle.

We tried to visit the new Hispanic family in the ward, the Chavez
family, but they weren't home when we went by. We went by again later
in the week and it was the same story. Patricia, the Hispanic lady
that is getting married to a member's brother, was very open to us
coming by, mainly just so she could have someone to talk with in
Spanish. We chopped a ton of wood (4 1/2 hours of it) this week, and
we delivered them a truckload. I think we did around 14 hours of
service this week. We also were able to have nice steaks with the
Gibsons, a more well off family, and we helped the moving guy install
their new king size bed. They only sent one guy, so it was a good
thing that we were there.

Note to you married/engaged/dating members: don't kiss your
husband/wife/significant other in front of the missionaries. It made
me so mad when a member did that at lunch with us, and it was 5
separate times. I counted. I'm at the point where if I see a shoulder
I start to miss girls more, so yeah, don't flaunt that you can do
that. Just wait like an hour.

Along with going to Martin's Cove, I found out that the very first
treks were started in the Riverton Stake. That one you always hear
about where the kids only had flour and water to eat, yeah, that was
here back in '94 or so. A ton of kids got sick from it, so they
decided it might be good to discontinue that. 

 Martin's Cove.

He stole my idea.

Random question for other missionaries currently out: did sledding and using trampolines
get banned in your missions? That was announced at zone conference,
and they said it's a "worldwide addition to the white handbook", but I
honestly think that's a lie. I think the mission president made that
rule since some missionaries got caught leaving their zone on P day to
go to a trampoline park and that is his retaliation. I could be wrong,
but let me know.

When they rescued the Martin and Willie handcart companies, that was
called the first rescue. Some years ago, the stake president here
received a revelation that some of those people in those companies
hadn't had their temple work done. Over 4,000 ordinances were done for
those individuals, and that was called the second rescue. Right now,
we're all part of the 3rd rescue, saving those that are still on the
earth and don't know where to find the truth they're searching for. An
apostle said something like, "Anyone that understands the Atonement
knows the joy of being rescued". Let's all be saviors on Mount Zion
and rescue our brothers and sisters.

We found this in one of the logs we split.

 After loading the wood in the rain.

 Random cave

It's Time to Keep Up the Work Anymore

February 15, 2016

I made this extra long to make up for the past few weeks. Sorry. We had a slightly more productive week than the last one. From making the usual rounds of trying to find less actives that were interested in coming back, having a zone conference, and doing exchanges, it was a pretty full.

I went on exchanges with Elder Schenk, and that was an eye opening experience. Unlike me, he has pretty much been able to work 100% for 100% of his mission. There was never a moment of "well I don't know what to do, let's call it a night". I can't imagine how my mission would have been if I were a missionary like he is, but it would have definitely been more full. But enough of comparing myself to others. I do that enough on my own that I don't need to rant about it to you guys. It was a good exchange, we taught a lot of people, and I got a much needed priesthood blessing. The next day, we got on the transfer van to head down to zone conference, had the 2 hour drive down, had 9 trainings and 4 role plays, and then had a 2 1/2 hour drive back. I was exhausted after that. Those pretty much eat up our day.

We had a family history social/dinner/fireside this week, and we were able to get the Nelsons to come to that. He is an active member of the Lutheran church, and she has been inactive for years, but we got them to come. He is really interested in family history work, so we've been getting him set up with that. We're going to teach him this week why we actually do family history work (vicarious ordinances), and hopefully that will fuel the fire (spark) that he has right now.

One night this week I tried to call dinner, but I mistook a 3 for a 7 and called a different number. The other line said something like "thanks for calling 97.1 hit music station! You're lucky caller number 5! You've won a trip for 2 to the Caribbean! You're.... Blah blah blah". I thought it was a scam and I had dialed the wrong number, so I hung up. It was the wrong number, but then I got to thinking about if maybe I really did win a trip for a cruise and I had hung up. I called back 3 more times that night, and each time the line was busy. So I'm pretty convinced that I turned down a free cruise. Elder Gould and I had a nice discussion about if we would risk leaving the mission for a week to cash in on that had I really won it. Also we met a 107 year old lady this week. She was kind of out of it though. 

We were able to finish off the week with 2 baptisms! Not our own...sorry, I should have said that first. 2 8 year old girls were baptized in the ward this week. It was awesome to go to those, even if it wasn't anyone we had strictly worked with. I got to conduct the 2nd one (I guess this family likes me a lot?). It was just a great way to end the week.

This last paragraph has nothing to do with missionary work and more with my turning into a grammar nerd/analyst. There is this unique linguistic thing that people in Lander and Riverton use that I haven't heard anywhere else before. They substitute the word "anymore" for "now' in places that don't actually grammatically make sense, and I have no idea why. I've heard it at least 4 times. So for example I have heard (verbatim, since I wrote it down immediately after hearing it to make sure I could tell you all since I'm weird like that) "School is like a 5 year degree for most people anymore, but it's still a 4 year degree", (talking about their dog) "She does so well inside anymore that we're not worried about leaving her home", and "It's just a nice little place anymore". None of those make sense, but people still say it a lot. Anyway, now you know. 

My old companion sent me this picture and I thought you would all appreciate it.