Mission Time Works Exponentially

The longer I'm out here the more I realize that missions are not very long and I really need to make the most of mine. I hit 13 months without even realizing it. I still feel like I'm about to hit my year mark and here I am at 13 months. 
     
This week I had the opportunity to go to UCF and table there, which is basically where you set up a booth in a main area and talk to people as they walk by. It was pretty fun just being able tk talk to a lot of different people in such a short amount of time. One thing I have really had to learn on my mission is how to talk and converse with random people you have never met. UCF was fun. 

We had quite a big change this week in how we do missionary work. I basically am going to have to relearn everything. I'm used to going out and knocking doors and finding people to teach every day. They now want us to put almost all our focus on the people we have already found. That means a lot more planning. Instead of 30 minutes of planning per day we have been using about 1.5 hours. We go through everyone we are teaching and figure out how we can help them that day, and then do it. I think with this new focus we will see a lot more of the people we teach progress quicker. I'm excited to see what happens. 
     
The other fun thing from this week has been posting Facebook stories. Our zone has been using Facebook for a transfer now, and it's hard posting things about the gospel that people will actually take time to take in and apply to their lives. I've been making short, entertaining video clips and posting them on my story each day. They are centered on the Book of Mormon. They have been a huge success, people we teach keep reaching out and saying they enjoy them, and some of their hearts have been softened towards the Book of Mormon. I'm very grateful for Facebook, it keeps life interesting, at least for me. 
     
That's all for this week. We also got transfer news, and Elder DeMoux and I are staying together for another transfer in Sanford. Lots of changes in the zone, though. Should be a good transfer. Catch you all next week. 

Conference! and Typical Missionary Week

October 7
So this week was nuts. We had exchanges with he ZL's which were super fun. We also found a dope new person to teach. And it was also conference this week!

     

So exchanges were super fun. I got to be in a trio for a day for my first time. It was quite fun actually. We got to go to mutual and play gator ball with the youth that night and we also had some good lessons and found some people. Going tracting in a trio is super fun for some reason.

     

We also met a new guy named Tony this week. So we were at the gas station filling up gas when the guy next to us says something about us getting cars now. We said that ya they give us cars, then he said "back in Utah they all have bikes. Huh. You know, I always wanted to be a Mormon. My wife wouldn't let me though." We were like "wait, what?" Then he said "actually, I'm not married to her anymore. Can I become a Mormon?" So ya we are going to meet with him this week and hopefully set a baptismal goal with him. What a miracle.

     

The best part of the week has to be conference, though. General conference as a missionary is hype. We get to chill with the boys for 8 hours and get personal revelation. It was awesome. Also, how about that cliffhanger huh? What's going on next conference? 

     

I guess I'll end with a funny story. This week at service I was talking to this guy and he asked me to guess how old he was. I said 60. Turns out he's going to turn 60 in a month, I think he though I was going to say he looked younger than that haha. Anyway, I decide to ask him how old he thinks I am. He guessed 34. I'm 19. Then 10 minutes later a guy was saying something about college or something to us and a lady told him we were too young to be in college. We said we were 19 and then she was like oh I thought they were like 16. So I don't know how old I look. Either 34 or 16.

     

Anyway, that's all for this week. Make sure to tune in next week for another email. 

October 14

Honestly this week has been the most normal week ever. It's been fun and pretty eventful, but nothing that would be too interesting for y'alls. I guess some of the most interesting things from this week would be that we started working with an excommunicated member to help her work towards coming back, we also became a trio for a day, and we also dealt with a lot of anti-latter-day saint people. (Don't really know the correct way to say that.) 

     

I'll start with the bad stuff. There seems to be a general theme every area I go. There's some problem that gets in our way everywhere I serve. Here the problem has been that people keep getting into stuff against our church. Two different solid people stopped meeting with us this week because their friend and their pastor told them some false things about the Book of Mormon and scared them away. One guy reached out to us for the sole reason of telling us how we are wrong, to which I gave a very polite response to each of his questions. He then ignored my answer and moved onto some other problem he had with us. Pretty typical. We deal with people like this every week. Sad, but what can you do? People have their agency. I guess "it must needs be that there is an opposition in all things."

     

This week we had a cool experience where we stopped by a part-member family and found out that the wife was actually excommunicated years ago. She had watched conference and loved it. She still has a testimony of the church, and we were able to get her to want to come back. She is going to meet with bishop and set a day to be rebaptized. It's great to see people be able to go through hardships and come out stronger on the other side. I feel like she has learned a lot from this and that she will be a super beneficial member of the ward when she returns.

   

The last fun thing about this week was being in a trio. There is a missionary who is getting trained by two zone leaders, and the zone leaders had a leadership meeting that he couldn't go to. So he joined us for the day. It was fun knocking doors with three of us. That's an interesting experience in itself. We also got to help with his training a little. Hopefully I didn't rub off on him too much though, because that would have been detrimental to his growth as a missionary haha. It was great to be able to get to know him better. 

     

Well I hope this has at least been interesting. Maybe a little too realistic, but I think that's a good thing. Not always rainbows and butterflies. Most of the time it is, though. And I think I'm at the point where I'm happy and content even when things do go as planned. That's what the gospel can do for you I guess.

The Manitou Incline

Ummm . . . my last post about hiking had me searching for my post about my last big hike we did in Colorado. The Manitou Incline.

It wasn't there.

I searched and searched and searched.

And finally I realized that I never documented it anywhere else besides Facebook land.

That hike was a crazy hike too. Not as long but just as intense.

For spring break we headed to Denver to recreate another time we had gone when Alex wasn't in the picture. However, this hike was new. Tyler and Alex stayed behind while the rest of us set out to tackle a hard thing.

2744 steps. 2000 foot elevation increase. 1 mile up. 75 minutes. Slow and steady put us on top of the world.

That vacation also took us to a fun park called Bananas,

the Denver Mint,

and the Zoo.

We watched some March Madness,

discovered a cute bookstore to rival Powell's in Portland,

and celebrated Ashlyn's birthday, something that's happened a few times over spring break. We even made sure she had her celebratory ding dong "cake."

I conquered a mountain

For nine years I've looked out my window at those TV towers and put it on my bucket list to hike to them some day.

That day came last Saturday.

It was a chilly 28 degrees when we started our 9.5 mile hike up and back (about 4000 feet elevation gain).

I won't lie. It wasn't an easy hike. I can commiserate with these two after they attempted this hike back in 2012 and didn't quite make it.

My body ached for several days and the recovery was worse than after any of my half marathons.

On the way back down I was comparing it to childbirth to one of my hiking buddies: I was sure I never wanted to do that hike again, but give me some recovery time and I knew I'd be looking out my window wondering when my next chance would come.

Was it worth it?

Salt Lake Valley

My neighborhood

Definitely. Sitting at 9054 gives you a whole different perspective.

The views were amazzzing. I loved being able to stand on the ridge and see the Salt Lake Valley on one side and the Tooele Valley on the other. So, so cool.

Running with a blessing in his back pocket

Nate is focused and knows what he wants. This year he knew he really wanted to run on the varsity cross country team which is only comprised of the top seven runners on the team. He ran all summer and has also been getting up early in the mornings to get a run in before school.

Region was on Friday and on Tuesday he started to come down with a cold, his second this season. The first cold he had did not allow him to run at full capacity and wasn't kind to his time and left his placement on the team in jeopardy. When he told me he wasn't feeling well, I thought why of all weeks. This week was crucial and would kind of determine whether he went on to state with the team. There were also 4 or 5 runners who were all vying for the coveted 5, 6, and 7 spots on the team, and each was only within seconds of each other.

Wednesday morning I asked him if he would like a priesthood blessing which he said yes to. Our wonderful friend, neighbor, former bishop came over later that night and gave him one. By Friday Nate was feeling much better but still a little congested.

I was nervous for him.

I wanted him to run well.

He wanted to run well.

It's hard to run well when you can't breathe.

He gave it his all and came in 6th place overall and 5th on his team.

Now there are some who would call this story a bunch of baloney and just coincidence. They would say Nate was on his way to getting better already.

But that isn't true.

Yesterday he was more congested than Friday and could hardly talk. Same with today.

God doesn't work in coincidences. God is in the very detail of our lives. He wants us to succeed. He cares deeply about what matters to us. He knew this race meant a lot to Nathan and he knew Nate had put in the effort and time to get to where he needed to be. He had done his part.

When all seems out of our control, turn to the One who is in control, who holds the power to overcome sicknesses and infirmities.

This week was a testimony to me of the power of the priesthood. How blessed we are that God would allow his sons and daughters to tap into his power to bless the lives of others when needed.

Went to UCF this week

Hello everyone! I guess I'll talk about the 2 main things that happened this week. The first was that I went on the most fun exchange ever on Friday. I got to go be in YSA for a day at UCF, and it was a blast. Then yesterday we had our return appointment with Brandon, the guy I talked about last week. This was our first lesson with him, and wow is he golden.

     

Friday was the funnest (yes I said funnest) day ever. I was with Elder Luke, a missionary I came out with. He's the DL here and he is a straight party. He is the most smiley person on the planet. We got to do a bunch of service that morning and then go tracting in some student housing there. We found 6 people in about 3 hours of tracting. Young people are just nicer I guess, plus they understand that we are normal people so they'll talk to us. Also while we were tracting, there were 2 people balling on some courts and so we went and asked them if we could play 2 on 2. They asked if we wanted to play in our white shirts, and we said yes. So we whooped them good. It was pretty fun. We got to talk to them about the gospel a little and give them a card with our number if they wanted to learn more. Anyway, that was our fun day. Now I want to serve in a YSA ward haha. 

     

So Brandon. Brandon is made of pure gold. We had a lesson on the Gospel of Jesus Christ that we taught using 2 Nephi 31. During which we read a verse about baptism, to which he commented that he wanted to get baptized. He has been growing his faith and repenting, and now he said he wants to get baptized. We said we could help with that. So he got himself a Nov. 2 baptismal date. He also said he wants to watch conference, come to church every week, read the Book of Mormon for an hour a day, help out with any activities or service we do at church, and start living the word of wisdom. We got all this from just our first lesson. The Lord is seriously blessing us here, and I don't really know why, but I'm OK with it.

    

So those were the highlights from the week. I also saw a Del Taco, which I didn't know existed out here, so I'll have to hit that up one day. (I used to work at Del Taco.)

     

I also have a challenge for each of you. General conference is this week. We all know people that are struggling with different things or have questions or problems. Invite them to watch a session of conference, and have them write their questions down beforehand. Miracles can happen. Conference can help people find the things they are looking for. I know the prophets are there for each of us. I hope you all enjoy conference this week. 

This video was me doing a Rubiks cube type thing blindfolded. It was pretty difficult