The Area

We have to travel fairly far everywhere we go, one of the wards is just as big as the last one I was in and the other is twice as big, so overall it is three times bigger than my last area plus we live just outside the area. The roads are busier than where I was before and that makes it interesting some of the time especially with people yelling out of their cars "ELDERS!" which always puts a smile on Elder Kearns face.

We went to a place in Queen Creek last Monday called Schnepf farms and it was a blast. Schnepf farms helped to invent the word Agritainment which is apparently in most modern dictionaries. We got to ride a little roller-coaster that they had found in someones backyard, it was really short and only slightly fun but who else can say they got to ride a roller-coaster on a mission? We also got to ride around in these little pedal go-carts which was probably the most fun thing there. They also fed us some hot dogs and told us a little bit about the farm and what goes on there. They are all Members of the Church and so the whole day was free. They had 2 corn mazes which we didn't have time for but that was fine.

Oh yeah, transfers. Elder Kearns is leaving his greenie area after 9 months here. I am staying and the whole district is staying the same. Normally we know about the rest of the zone as to whether or not people are leaving or staying, and through the grapevine you just hear about pretty much everybody else's condition for transfers. I will get a different companion at the meeting on Wednesday, that makes a new companion every transfer since being with my trainer for the first 4 1/2 months of my mission.

Family History

The beginning of this week was pretty slow but that's just how it goes on a mission sometimes. Towards the end it started to pick up. We stopped by a part-member family who Elder Kearns hadn't been able to contact yet and they let us in and stopped watching football just to talk to us. They almost talked our ears off about anything and everything but it was neat to blend everything they talked about back into the gospel and the non-member husband said we could come back and teach him the discussions.

There was another guy who talked to us about wanting to learn more about the church so we went over to his house and an older man with the same name answered. We started to talk to him and the other guy was actually his son but this older one wanted to learn more about the church's family history help because his great grandpa was a very successful person and they just want to know as much as they can about them. We are setting up a time for him to meet with the family history specialist who lives in the stake and he was really excited. He accepted a Book of Mormon but only because it appealed to his "history" part of his brain. He was really nice and hopefully we will be able to teach the whole family here in a little bit.

General Conference

So, this week has been really great because we invited a bunch of people to come to church and they have almost all said they would, we realized on Thursday however that last weekend was actually General Conference, haha. We tried to stop by people and tell them, but no one would answer so we just showed up at the times that people said they would come to church and no one ended up coming which was both a relief and a bummer.

I got to do my second district meeting which went a whole lot better than the first one because I had actually organized all the things that I wanted to do in a certain order. Still really weird being around Sister missionaries all the time because like I said my last zone only had 1 set and they weren't even in my district, now my zone has more Sister missionaries than Elders in it haha. It is a great change of pace because before we were pretty focused on what we could do as missionaries and now it is more like how we can help these people feel better in their lives and it is more focused on the investigators.

Primary Program

Elder Kearns had been teaching an over aged youth named Ella, who just got baptized last Saturday. She had a blast! She was more excited than anyone I have ever met about getting baptized. We invited a part-member family to attend the baptism but they didn't show, not all was lost because they showed up to church yesterday and we had an amazing Primary Program which definitely invited the spirit.

We were walking around last Saturday around 7pm-8pm just talking to people and figuring out what we could do when an investigator that we have been trying to contact pulled up next to us and talked to us for 5 minutes. She had been working like 100 hours that week and just wasn't ever home, we set up a time to come by this week.

The members up here in Mesa/Gilbert are a little different than in San Tan Valley just by what they are able to provide. We always get attention no matter where we are and it is sooo embarrassing, because literally everywhere we go people are like "Wooot, it's the Elders! Yeah!" I really don't like this much attention.