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| What happens when your leaders get a hold of your camera! |
Well today kind of sucked. It started off by going to spend tons of money on my food for the month. After that we went to a zone activity where everyone played volleyball except for me for 2 reasons: 1. I don’t really like playing team sports, and 2. My legs are ridiculously sore from a workout yesterday. The worst part of the day was bringing an extra bike aback to the house by dragging it alongside me. At one point I looked behind me to see my companion and discovered that he wasn’t there. I looked again and still couldn’t see him. On the third look, the bike that I was dragging hit the bike that I was riding and I crashed HARD. I immediately got super upset with my companion for not keeping up with me. I was in pain and I yelled at him. I mean, seriously my legs are so sore that I can barely walk, and I was riding a mountain bike, dragging another bike behind me, so I was barely moving forward and he still was not keeping up with me on his street bike. It is such a source of frustration to me.
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| Giant bruise on my bad knee. |
The funny part of the day was when I let my companion ride ahead of me and he rode much faster. At one point, I hung way back to let him know what it felt like to, all of a sudden, for no reason, not have your companion within site. It freaked him out a bit and I think he now understands a little better how I feel.
February 4, 2016
Today we ended up having division with Elder Diaz and Elder Anderson again. Once again, I stayed in the sector, but this time I stayed with Elder Anderson. My whole body hurt me from my crash yesterday. Our lunch fell through so we were able to do our weekly planning after a quick bite to eat. The divisions were way fun. We out to the woods/fields in our sector and spent the whole day visiting and teaching out there. Elder Anderson, despite only having 4 months in the mission, speaks/teaches/testifies really well!
Miracle #544: All of the plans we made for lessons worked out today, including the reference from the bishop to contact a less active.
The fun part of the day was realizing that on one of the roads we ride there are literally millions of blackberries. They are just starting to come into season, which is probably why I have never noticed them before. We stopped for a few minute and picked berries while talking. I have never done this on the mission before so it was a nice little break. The only bad thing is that we had to ride over 30 kilometers, and when we got back, we were 100% wiped out. We could barely wit up, so we ended our day laying down.
Today was really a good day. After getting back from divisions my companion and I talked for a long time about the fact that as a personal friend, he does not trust me because I am so prone to irritation. He, like all my other laid back companions, told me that I nee to control my temper. I agree, but he does not seem to see how he has any role to play in what irritates me. I suppose that the fact that he doesn’t understand me is just like the fact that I don’t understand why he can’t seem to do certain things that are hard for him, like contacting or riding a bike. We agreed to try to be more understanding of one another. Our work day was better after that. I tried really hard to not give him any correction or even suggestions today. He does not do well with any sort of correction. He felt a lot better at the end of the day.
Miracle #545: I was prompted by the spirit to go to a less active member who we contacted before. She was there, but the miracle was that just this week, the missionaries who baptized her, also got in touch with her after years with no contact. These two coincidences have inspired her to think and pray about the direction of her life.
The funny part of the day was contacting after a lesson fell through. After knocking on the door, a REALLY cute girl walked out. (at least, I think she was cute, but I have missionary goggles on, which I am told are worse than beer goggles.) It was my companion’s turn to contact, but as I looked at him he had a glazed over deer in the headlights look. My inner missionary took over and I started the contact with the girl and her sister. It ended up being a good lesson.
February 6, 2016
So we had a good day today. It started with a service at 9:15, but the service wasn’t really supposed to start until 10:00. The zone leaders wanted everyone to get there by 10:00, which is why they announced an earlier hour. We got there at 9:15 and waited. I was irritated by that whole strategy, and then the service ended up being digging around 50 hole that were about 2 feet deep. After just under an hour of working, 10 of the elders dropped off from work and were just watching 3 of us finish the digging. The best part of this 3 hour project was the shockingly good lunch that they served us.
Miracle #546: After weeks of telling my companion to do it, Elder Huaiquinir extended his first baptismal invitation and the guy accepted!
We had a miracle division while trying to set up someone to visit a less active. Nico Sepulveda, our Elder’s quorum president, just got back today from being a counselor in the Spanish version of EFY. He was dog-tired, but agreed to go out with us and it was a good night of visits.
February 7, 2016
Today was a pretty decent Sunday despite being a Fast Sunday. Usually attendance drops off during summertime, but today was an exception. We had several investigators and less active members come today. A lot of our members were gone on vacation today, including the bishop. This makes it hard to get members to accompany us. Today we did some interesting contacts where drunk guys harassed us for about 20 minutes.
Miracle #547: Alvaro, the son of one of our less active members, was able to join a huge youth camping trip at the very last minute. Also, V. is back home and we visited with her.
There were a few funny parts of the day today like when I “pranked” Elder Martinez about V. I never let him know how sick she was so I called him and said, “Elder, I have some bad news, V. fell into a coma.” He understandably got really worried and then I told him that she was improving and was able to come home.
February 8, 2016
Today was interesting. We had our district meeting where we found out that some of the zone will be transferred. Elder Diaz is going, sadly. I will really miss him. We had been in the same zone for a long time! After the district meeting, I got hit by another car. I was riding normally and came to an intersection without a stop sign, but I slowed down out of caution (due to fear from being hit before.) I didn’t see any cars as I entered the intersection, but then a car came flying through and I had to slammed on my brakes. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I was carrying an ironing board on the back of my bike at the time, my back end came flying around and slammed me into the side of the car. Everything would have been fine had my front tire not gotten stuck in the car’s wheel well. The tire is all messed up now, much worse than the time I got hit by the bus.
The funny part of this whole thing was when the driver stopped, he got out of his car, looked at us, then at his car and then just drove away without a word. He didn’t even ask if I was okay. As for the rest of the day, we had a good day of work and contacted a little on top of the lessons that we taught. We did have a fairly frustrating lesson about The Book of Mormon and the people not accepting the challenge to read it.
February 9, 2015
Today was good, but a little bit frustrating for me. We ate lunch with S. today and had a great lesson about temples. Then our next planned lesson fell through and I let my companion choose what he thought we should do. He chose to visit people on the reference list. I knew that it was way too early in the day for anyone to be home, and I also knew that our time would be better spent contacting, but I decided to not say anything and just do what he wanted to do. This is what is so hard about being a trainer. I need to let him choose, but I know that I am not helping him to grow by allowing him to avoid the things that he does not like doing. His latest strategy is to pass by 20 people in the street to knock a door where he knows no one is home.
Miracle #549: S. is going on vacation so we were worried about losing contact with her just when she is making progress. But, the owner of the place where she is going is a member and he is going to help her to go to church while she is there.
The funny part of the day was finding out when and why my companion rides so slowly. He can easily keep up with me, but today, when I gave him a slight criticism before heading somewhere else, he immediately started riding slower. The reason things have been so much better this week is that I have stopped correcting him and I took over leading the companionship again. He hasn’t had to make many choices or take the initiative and I am not fixing any of the problems. We are not working well/efficiently, but at least we are working “happier.”
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