Training, Again

The weather has just barely cooled off to just under 100 everyday and I am embarrassed to say that it has been a little "chilly" lately, especially at night. My new companion is Elder Hurst from Lehi, Utah and currently has been out in the field for 6 days.

We were super busy this last week helping out with a scouting activity that is happening this Saturday. They are reenacting The Candy Bomber from "Meet the Mormons" and they might even be able to get Gale Halverson to come to it. He is currently 95 years old and lives in Tuscon, Arizona, but if he gets his doctors approval he will be able to attend. We helped them make the little parachutes for the candy, for roughly about a total of 8 hours last week.

Halloween was different because President Nattress didn't want us to even proselyte in the morning, so the whole day was like another P-Day minus the whole e-mail bit. We attended some of the baptisms in the zone and went to the Temple at night for Endowment sessions, the whole mission went with the first session starting at 4:30pm and the last (our zones) starting at 7pm. I loved it because I haven't had the opportunity to go to the Temple for almost 5 months because of Migranes, Elder Barney being a 2 transfer missionary and then last transfer I had a horrible ear ache. It was great to be able to go.

Training is pretty easy and Elder Hurst is a nice missionary who has a sincere desire to do the work, so hopefully I will be able to help him become the best missionary he can. I know how upset you were last time when I didn't tell you I was training so I thought I might as well tell you this time.  Haha!

I love the Temple! I am happy, happy, happy that I now have a testimony of something that now means a lot to me and I hope to increase that every time I go. This is definitely where I need to be and where the Lord would have me.

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.

Transferred

I live in an apartment complex, there is a lot that is different about it from where I have been living. But some things are similar, I once again live with zone leaders, so in all of my mission, I have only lived with other missionaries and have only not lived with the zone leaders for 2 transfers.

My new companions name is Elder Kearns, he is a hard working dedicated servant of the Lord, which is really great because I never have to worry about trying to go out and work, we just do.

I was called to be a District Leader in this new area. It is the Higley Zone, we technically live in Gilbert, right on the East border (Power rd), our area is technically in Mesa, Arizona. We live on the very North boundary of the mission (Base line), so I am as far North as you can be in the mission, but not so far North as to even think about buying a jacket, haha. In my district there are only Sisters and a senior couple, which is really weird because I haven't had Sisters in the same district as I have been in since my first transfer, so as you can imagine I am pretty nervous about that, but not terribly. In my last zone there was only one companionship of Sisters, and now there are 5! Add to them, 3 sets of Elders including the zone leaders, they joke that we make up a Relief Society Presidency. So, even though we are in an apartment, we still have access to our own washer and dryer which is really nice. And we have a ton of different facilities, like a gym and vending machines. We are pretty close to a Walmart and other things, we e-mail from the Stake center computers which is different as well. A lot has changed but missionary work is virtually the same just different people.

I'm Being Transferred

So we got calls really late, in fact they were supposed to come last night around 10pm but we just got them at 2:30 today. Not really a problem. I am getting transferred and don't know exactly where yet, I will find out on Wednesday, which is transfer day.

The senior missionaries in our zone set up a movie night at one of the church buildings that we could invite investigators to.   Nolan, one of the more solid investigators came. We watched "Meet the Mormons" it was pretty good, I had never seen it before.

Nolan flew home on Saturday last week, home being Washington. He was living with his aunt and was supposed to be here for a little while longer but he has agreed to keep meeting with the missionaries when he returns.

I am not sure what I am going to do, but hopefully I will adjust to a new ward well enough to work effectively right away, and if not, I guess I will have to at some point.