Thursday, July 7, 2016

Consecration Week

June 22, 2016
    Today was a pretty dang good p-day for me even though it was sad.  It started off with a really meaningful service project at a members house from another stake.  Our entire zone went to help them rebuild their completely burned out house.  They lost a teenaged daughter in the fire.  I cannot imagine the pain that that family is going through right now.  Doing real service for people in real need is very meaningful and fulfilling.  I was designated at the wrecking ball of the project while the other elders had to clean up the mess that I made. 



Miracle #683: The rest of the family made it out of the fire alive.  It could have been much more tragic.
    The funny part of the day was watching the game between Chile and Columbia with the bishops family.  I simply do not understand how people can get so excited about a sport.  I can understand playing soccer and watching it, but when you start yelling insults at the other team, it is overkill. The other hilarious part of the day was playing with an electronic zapping machine thing that Elder Alsplund has.  It makes your muscles involuntarily contract at varying frequencies. We tried different muscle groups and the funniest one was the side of the neck.  We were laughing for 30 minutes straight. 
June 23, 2016
    Today was a fun day with my comp.  This morning we has our first planning session and we decided that next week we are going to do a consecration week which is where you have the goal to be out of the house as long as you can.  Our goal is 100 hours for the week. In order to do this, we have to leave the house every day by 7:00 am and eat 30 minutes lunches, and return home at 10:50 every night.  We also have to do a shortened p-day.  I have always wanted to try to do one of these weeks but have never been able to do it.  I am really excited about next week.
Miracle #684: All of the 4 people we taught today accepted a commitment and that made my companion super happy.
    The fun part of the day was just talking to my comp all say in the street.  For most of the last year of my mission, I haven’t really talked to my comps.  Of course biking between appointments prevents talking.  I am glad that I have Elder Aspland to talk to here at the very end of my mission.  We are going to finish together and finish strong.  It was pretty funny today when both of us got stuck for a few minutes watching a show that a member had playing in their house.  Usually it is just one missionary that gets sucked in and then their companion pulls them away from it.  But in this case, we were both mesmerized by “Independence Day” with all the action and explosions and stuff…oh boy!
June 24, 2016
    We had a good day today.  This morning we did a few contacts and then went to the church to print up a list of members.  We had the biggest lunch of every month with a member who usually makes a very large amount of awful tasting stuff. But today it was really good.  We ate broccoli and beans which came back to haunt us later in the day.  In the afternoon we went to the temple with B. and her mom, R, and her little brothers.  It is really a great thing to be able to take the people that you are teaching to the temple. 
Miracle #685: The biggest miracle was getting R. to go and do baptisms for the dead for the first time in her life.  She was super nervous, but she had a very positive experience. I was really happy to be able to help the ward in the temple today.
    There was a funny part of the day that was also a miracle of sorts.  We had to run back to the church to grab our phone and a guy asked us if he could use the church bathroom.  We let him in and then we also taught him a lesson.  We got his reference and everything.  The other super funny part of the day was when my comp. just destroyed the temple bathroom with “broccoli and beans”.
June 25, 2016
    Today was all right. This morning we did contacts in the fair with a pendon and it was quite successful for me.  After that, pretty much all of our plans fell through.  Our lunch was and enormous hassle that I would have preferred to miss all together.  After lunch, we started a companionship fast and went out to work.  Elder A. has a hard time with urgency, but for me it is not even worth bothering him about.  We walked around trying to introduce him to all the ward members but of course, no one was home.
Miracle # 686: We has a plan to teach someone, but I forgot where he lived and so we went to another person.  Then a little after we visited with that person, I remembered where plan A lived and when we got there, he was just pulling into his driveway. 
    The funny part of the day was when a guy came to us and tried to convince us that we should burn the Book of Mormon because if we didn’t, we would burn in Hell.  The other funny part of the day was when I walked up to a guy I know who was working with a friend an I just asked him how he was.  The friend just interrupted and obviously wanting me to go away just rudely said, “We are working right now.” Yeah if you don’t laugh at the daily rejection, you might just cry.
June 26, 2016
    Today was a good day.  In the morning, we had quite  few of our people actually come to church and one of my dreams from the beginning of my mission came true.
Miracle #689: Every since my training I have wanted to be able to see Maxi receive the priesthood and today that dream came true.


    The funny part of the day was how few people were in the street for the final of the Copa America.  Literally there was NO ONE.  It was pretty fun when some super chill people gave us some meat.  The celebration when Chile won the Copa America for the second time ever in history was pretty HUGE! 
    We are working super hard this week, but I am very low on energy.  With effort and faith, hopefully we can see miracles happen this week.  I am actually pretty trunk thinking about the fact that I only have 5 weeks left, but I want to work my butt of and forget about home if possible.  To be honest, I am so tired that I am worried about lasting to the end.  I can’t wait until I can rest.
June 27, 2016
    Today was an incredible day of work.  We started our consecration week by leaving the house at 7 AM and working all day long without stopping or going back to the house.  We spent basically 10 of our 15 working hours contacting.  We ended up pulling off a staggering 9 lessons in one day.  As far as quantity of lessons go, today was a record for both of our missions.
Miracle #688: All day long we were using a ward list to try to find members and even though we didn’t find very many, we actually found a ton of new people.
    To me, the whole day was super funny.  Elder A. is a funny guy. One more than one occasion today, dogs were barking at us and Elder A. would look and me and say, “on the count of 3 we are going to chase them.”  Every single time we chased after the dogs, they got scared and just booked it off the street.  By the end of the day, we hurt pretty bad from all the walking and chasing. My knees and back and feet are killing me tonight.  But, I feel super happy about how the day turned out.  Elder A. is one of my favorite companions because he makes everything we do pretty fun. You never know what he is going to do. On top of that, we teach really well together.
June 28, 2016
    Today was another miracle filled day.  I can’t really fathom why we are being so blessed, but we have has a ton of miracles.  This morning we started our 15 hour work day doing morning contacts that weren’t super productive at all. After that unsuccessful hour, we went to the chapel an did some list work on the computer discovering around 20 less active members to visit in our sector and about 520 in the other elder’s sector.
Miracle #689: Through a weird series of coincidences, we were standing outside of a ladie’s fence and SHE came out to contact us.  She is prepared for the message and she told us that she wanted to go to church.
    The funny part of the day was searching for member on our list and not finding her.  At 9:30 we went to a lesson planned with a future investigator and as it turned out, the investigator lives with the less active member that we were looking for!  We then proceeded to have a very good lesson with 2 people who understood more about the gospel that anyone else I have taught in a very very long time. She literally explained to us every principle that we wanted to teach her.  I am not kidding when I say that I haven’t been this excited to work for a long time!

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