Hey family and friends!!!! Pretty exciting week, if you couldn't tell by the caption. I'll get to that a little later. It was also one of my hardest weeks ironically enough, but that is usually how it is.
Let's see...Tuesday through Wednesday I was on exchanges with our District Leader Elder Black. I've never really been a fan of exchanges. Typically an exchange is when you switch companions with either your zone leader or District Leader for 2-3 days at a time. Because I'm in the office and Elder Black can't really help with anything in there, we did a 24 hour exchange. It went ok I guess. We had a lesson with Beau, our investigator that we got last week who's 32. He's doing well, we just went back over the Restoration and read a chapter in the Book of Mormon. It was a smooth transition as we needed to refer him over to Elder Black's area anyway. Later that night, we went to Cafe Rio with 2 members of our ward. It was Taco Tuesday!!! Institute was right after that, which is always sweet. We discussed 2 Nephi 28 which is all about the Doctrine of the Devil and about how he carefully drags us down. I learned a lot of really cool insights which I might discuss in my other blog (to those who read that) :).
Splits were good on Wednesday. I got to meet up with one of our Recent Converts named Adrianna. She lives on the college campus, so it was weird being in dorms again. Got some flashbacks of BYU! I miss school but know this is the place to be.
Thursday they were cleaning carpets at the Mission home so we did our online work at the college library. It was also a great opportunity to find college aged kids. We met up with Meghan Powell, our other recent convert to see how she was doing. We're working on getting her the follow-up lessons and helping her find rides to activities. She's been doing pretty good. In fact, she's already been going on splits with the sister missionaries!
Thursday night, we got to go to another Rodeo! Chase Edward, one of the members, was going to be bull riding again, and we got invited (with tickets paid) to go. Unfortunately we didn't get to see Chase ride because it was past our curfew (930PM). But it was still really fun and a good experiece! Although one guy got bucked off the horse and it came down on his hip dead weight...did not look pleasant.
Friday we got to meet with Josh. We taught him a lesson on Tithing, which was perfect because that's what the Gospel Principles class was on when he was at church this past Sunday. He was ready to pay Tithing right then and there! But we told him he is not required till he's a member yet :P Friday night we volunteered at the corn maize again as corn cops. We actually picked up a potential investigator who works for one of the radio stations out here! Funny enough, he was doing an advertisement for the radio corn maize, and we got to be part of it! It was just over the radio, but basically we were just supposed to sound lost and were shouting names back and forth (as part of the advertisement). Pretty sweet.
I got to go to the Temple again this last Saturday! Tannah O'Banion (one of my good friends in the singles ward) has her mission call and is leaving December 4. Most of her family is not members, so I asked President Mecham if it would be okay that Elder Yeske and I support her by attending. President approved and so we got to go! She was really grateful and it was an awesome experience. Something kind of fun that happened later that day was raking leaves. Elder Packham called us and invited us to assist them raking some leaves on one of the college campuses. BIGGEST pile of leaves I've ever made or seen! Someone pulled off the road and asked if their three year old could jump in it. So him and his two sons jumped in! THe pile was probably about 6' high and 8' long :D After 31 huge black bags, the pile is still not even halfway gone! So many leaves. We came back later that night and jumped in ourselves when no one was around haha. Elder Packham and I did a synchronized front flip...except I ended up kicking him square in the face haha.
Yesterday we got to see one of our ward missionaries give his farewell and he's off to Fresno, California.
This morning we had training...ON OUR NEW iPAD MINI's! OK....there are so many ridiculously cool things. I'll name a few. 1, it has an online area book. Which includes teaching records, progress records, addresses, our entire ward mapped out, reporting straight to salt lake for our key indicators, digital planners...if you've been on a mission, you know how tedious it was to keep up a paper area book. 2, they sync to whatever area you are in. If I get transferred to a new area, I enter that area's assigned ID and receive the past missionaries' area book records. 3, you HAVE to report what each visit was in order to report a key indicator number. Meaning that your area book is forced to be updated in order to report key indicators (stats) for the week. 4, WE EACH GET OUR OWN AND TRAVEL WITH THEM. FIFTH...WE GET TO TAKE THEM HOME AFTER OUR MISSIONS. WHAT?!?!?!?!?! How crazy is that!!! Other cool things, is that they are pretty locked down. You can only use certain approved apps and the others are automatically dormant. Everything is monitored by Salt Lake and the mission president, so there is less temptation to get distracted or do something dumb. I can't begin to say how stoked I am. Doctrine and Covenants 88:73...another prophesy fulfilled! Also, it has skype on it and facetime...we are permitted to skype appointments that we can't make and even facetime. We can have "member present lessons" with a member on skype. SO COOL! So that is the highlight of my week :)
That is so cool that Torie got to go to the temple to do some family names! I really want to do that when I get home. I got a cool letter from Lacey today, that was nice. I got Jesse's letter, but no word on the pictures. Hope you have a great week! Love and miss you all!
Picture of me and Tannah after her endowment.
Picture of Me and Parker (Elder) Vonk
