The weather here in Billings has been so nice! 60's all week and even some days in the 50's. Sweater weather! Out apartment got down to 57 degrees...how awesome is that :) Speaking of, last P-day we moved apartments. We no longer live with another set of Elders which is a bummer :/ I am going to miss Elder Wade. Our apartment isn't too bad. Concrete walls, a broken shower, no air conditioning...but the shower got fixed 2 days ago :D
Tuesday was Mission Leadership Council. This past transfer, THREE new zones were created, making a total of 13 zones. How crazy is that? All the Zone Leaders and Sister Training Leaders came to Billings to discuss how to improve the mission. Although I am not in leadership, we got invited to present a program that Elder Brisco and I made. Basically it is a phone analysis that tracks calls out of area, keeps track of frequency of calls to a particular number, calls after 10PM, calls Longer than 10 minutes, and who is actually being called. It's a pretty extensive program so that was fun explaining to everyone. Kind of intimidating to. But basically, now the Zone Leaders can send us a text, we do a phone report on someone in their Zone, and email it to them. Pretty cool stuff.
Did I mention our new investigator Mario last letter? We are teaching a 21 year old guy named Mario who plays college baseball for MSU-Billings. Super solid guy. He's had the discussions before, dated an LDS girl, and is already in 3 Nephi! This week we taught him the Plan of Salvation and it was awesome. He is going to be baptized October 12! Woo hoo! He also came to church yesterday which was sweet.
We continue to meet with Eliza. She wants to take the sacrament SO bad, and wants it to happen over night. But she realizes it will take time and that the Lord will strengthen her through her trials. We've been teaching her all the discussions over again to help build her testimony and Gospel knowledge. We taught her tithing and chastity this week.
Josh...dropped us! :( Frustrating. He sent us a text saying he was done with church for now and thanked us for our time. We asked what's going on, and he said he just couldn't keep commitments and won't come to church. He said he felt it was disrespect to us...It's sad for me to see how so many people feel like they have to be perfect to come to church. Church is FOR imperfect people. We go to church to repent and learn. My WHOLE purpose as a missionary is to invite others to come unto Christ and to partake of his Atonement. We are trying to see ho we can meet with him again
The ward did ice blocking again :) I didn't do it this time though. But, afterwards they had hot chocolate, marshmallows, brownies, all kinds of sugary stuff. It just doesn't get better than this :)
Saturday we got to volunteer at the corn maze! I love corn mazes! Parker Vonk, one of our ward missionaries volunteers there 3 days a week and actually volunteers as a zombie for apocalyptic paintball. Basically he wears motocross gear with a zombie mask and zombie clothes over it. A trailer equipped with paintball guns and 2 huge cylinders of CO2, drives by, and the zombies come running at you while they get shot a bazillion times by 10 paint ballers. It's pretty awesome haha. Unfortunately we can't do that, but we got to be "Corn Cops" and kick people out for throwing corn or cutting through it. Super fun :D
Congrats to Torie on getting the Black Plume! She deserves it! Being a boss on that marimba :) And congrats to Jesse on his swimming merit badge! I miss swimming a lot :/ It's probably already to cold to swim up here though. Glad you were able to make it to your conference and back, Dad haha sounds like quite the experience! I hope you all have a great week and great General Conference! Love you!
Elder Inman