Chapter 4: A Week In A Hotel

Steaks to celebrate the half-way mark of their missions.

Elder Anderson and Elder Eden

Elder Anderson with his new companion, Elder Johnson.

7/20/2020

Today was a really cool Pday! We got to go to Walmart with a companionship that was nice enough to give us rides, and usually that companionship doesn't buy any food so I end up feeling bad because we do buy a LOT of food and they usually end up waiting for a long time, but today they bought actual groceries, I was very proud of them. Our groceries were pretty great; Collins hits his year mark on July 23rd and I hit it on the 24th, so we splurged the money we had been saving today on steak, we're pretty excited for our anniversaries now. Usually on your anniversary it's mission tradition to burn one of your old white, discolored shirts, but we don't really have a place to do that, we don't want to do it at our apartment because we'd definitely scare people, and we can't do it at the church because enough people as it is already think that we're a cult. We also got to film another video about life after death for our Facebook page which was pretty great. The videos we make are pretty good quality, but they still leave a lot to be desired. We also got to do a service project today, we moved a coffin into a guys shed and we got some pretty good pictures of Elder Collins standing next to it before we moved it. The guy was super grateful for our help, and we were glad to have a way to help him out. We also got to do a practice lesson with another companionship where Collins and I got to pass along some wisdom to the people who wanted to practice with us. All of today was so exciting that we forgot to eat until 9:00.

7/21/2020

Today was very exciting. Elder Collins and I got ready pretty quickly so that we could head off to our district counsel early this morning, which was bittersweet because this was my first time doing district counsel with some of these people, and my last time getting to do district counsel with them for quite some time. The district was all really sad about my leaving which was pretty touching, some of these people I've only known for a matter of days, and yet we've still grown united. We also had a couple of interesting lessons today, one was a contact with a less active member (we could tell he was less active because he took the Lord's name in vain a lot as he was speaking to us). This man educated us a lot in politics in the ten minutes we were talking to him, and we even set up a return visit with him, so that's going to be interesting. Another cool lesson we had today was with the Saaris. Brother Saari is the 92 year old guy, and he was telling us today about how he mowed the lawn, vacuumed the house, and many other chores for his wife today which I thought was the sweetest thing ever, I hope I'm as valiant as he is at 92. We also got to share in our all mission devotional tonight about our baptism for the Custers. It was really cool to get to share with everyone and be a way to strengthen their faith about Facebook. Tomorrow's my last full day in this area, so we're going to have to make it a good one.

7/22/2020

Well, we made it a good one. Today Collins and I had to get ready pretty quickly because we had an all mission meeting early this morning. The meeting was good, we talked a lot about how to not be robots on our Facebook pages, which I thought was pretty silly, but then they showed us messages missionaries had sent and I realized that maybe this training was needed after all. After the meeting we got to come back and have lunch. We made gyros with meatballs in an attempt to use some up, but Elder Collins and his next comp still have like, 30 left. Then we got to go to the church and do our comp study for the last time which was very sad. We had a district call where I got to say goodbye to everyone and then a call with my Zone Leaders to say goodbye to them as well. I'm really going to miss these guys. We got to teach a lesson to Brother and Sister Clark tonight. We explained Priesthood authority for Sister Clark's benefit, I don't think she understood it perfectly, but it's a pretty new concept for most people, and she seemed to grasp some of the bigger ideas behind it so that was cool. Elder Collins and I also had to celebrate our one year anniversaries today, since we're getting transfered when they're really happening. Our celebrations included  eating from a massive pile of meat and blasting church music for everyone in our apartment complex to hear and be converted by. It was a pretty awesome celebration.

7/23/2020

Today was my first day serving in the Uncompahgre ward. This morning Elder Collins and I got up and I finished packing so that everything would be set for transfers. I don't think that I lost too much in transfers, just a notebook. After a short wait for our district leader to give us a ride to the chapel we headed out to pick up our new companions. I got to meet my new comp, Elder Johnson, he's an awesome guy and the old companion of my zone leader, Elder Samoijla. After we got everything for the new area sorted out we started off. This new area is pretty cool because we have a truck, the only one on the mission. We'll be sharing it with another companionship, but being able to drive is pretty cool. We started off by dividing the area up with our ward mission leader. Elder Johnson and I will be working in the Southern portion of the area. Our living conditions are pretty weird right now, we don't have any way to cook (boo...), but we are staying in a hotel (yay?). Fortunately these won't be very permanent living conditions. We're only scheduled to be here for a week, but there are some Sisters in this hotel too that are scheduled to be here for at least a month. Those Sisters are part of our district and one of them is super sick, so we went with our district leader to get them Sprite and crackers. I didn't have a lot of faith in those remedies, so when we got to the Sister's door we offered to them a blessing, which they were very grateful for. We came in and were getting ready to start when we got a call from our District leader, he said, "Be sure not to have contact with the Sisters, we don't want you guys getting sick", I replied, "umm... it's too late for that", while we made awkward eye contact with the Sisters. Our DL continued, "oh no! You guys had contact with them, did you talk to them face to face?" I didn't do much to assure him, "yeah, we did..." (at this point it was getting hard to restrain our laughing). So we didn't give the Sister a blessing, I guess we'll just have to have faith in crackers and Sprite. We also had some awesome lessons with the members today, we called enough people that when we went to report to our ward mission leader at the end of the day, he had already heard some of what we'd been doing from the members we had contact with. It was pretty cool that our reputation preceded us.

7/24/2020

Today was my one year mark! We didn't do anything special, but that's okay, because I got to celebrate with Collins on Wednesday. Today was important for Johnson and I because we got to plan out the way we want this week and most of this transfer to go. I can't reveal too much because it would spoil all of the surprises, but we have a pretty big vision for this area, we're ready to make it the incredible place it was meant to be. We're kind of struggling for food, because this hotel doesn't have a place to cook, but a member brought us dinner tonight which totally saved us. I also got to drive a truck today which was the first time I had driven a truck and also the first time I had ever driven on a mission. I don't know why it felt so weird to drive as a missionary, but it definitely felt like it was breaking a part of me. Maybe the "walking missionary" part of me from Brazil thought I was giving up on it. Elder Johnson and I had some great success calling members and uninterested persons today, since we have a new SIM card no one has blocked our number yet, which means that many people got sucked into lengthy phone conversations with us, they were all very positive interactions, though. The best part about today though was definitely breakfast. This hotel provides breakfasts, and they have a waffle maker. That waffle maker is easily the greatest thing I have ever used, this is going to be a very good week here.

7/25/2020

I forgot to say: Monday when Elder Collins and I went to the trailer park we were obstructed from getting to the door, so what did we do? We used my training from Brazil and clapped the door. Elder Collins said, "I don't think anyone heard that..." and then the dude opened the door. I was very proud of myself. Today we had dinner with two members (but they don't know that so don't tell them). The Bishop brought over dinner to the Elder's appartment, and to our surprise, we found out that another lady had been cooking all day and was expecting us for dinner. We had told her that we wanted to set up a lesson with her family, she interpreted that as dinner? So we ate with her and then we got to share our lesson, so win-win for everyone except Bishop because we haven't cleared off the tray he gave us for dinner, so we can't return it quite yet... We also had a lot of success with beginning to message people personally. I'm now an advisor for parents which is pretty awesome, and trying to build up a friend group centered on Christ. The cool part about this is that I get to work with people from all over the world and pass them along to missionaries in their proper areas once they start progressing. It took a while to build up the will to want to try to help everyone because I've been prideful and only wanted to help the people in my area. I finally got over it and now we're doing some incredible work helping out the world.

7/26/2020

Today was a great day! We organized the driving rotation and today was one of our days, so I got to drive our truck around all day, which was pretty awesome. This truck is such a nice, new car, it causes me anxiety to be driving it. We have so many precautions for driving as missionaries, there's a "black box" of doom, as the other missionaries call it, it's supposed to warn you if you're driving too fast, but I didn't even notice it, I'm too scared of scratching the giant truck I'm driving to go over 25mph. We had an awesome church meeting today, we met about half of the members and made such cool friendships, the people really connected with us today. We had so much fun talking to people and getting to know their stories. We also got to bear a quick testimony before the sacrament speaker spoke today which was really cool. People seemed a lot more interested in talking to us after they knew what kind of missionaries we were. We taught a couple of lessons to members today which was a blast, we taught our Bishop and the Foster family, both of whom committed to share recordings of their testimonies with us. We're very excited that we're getting so much support from our members for our work with this ward. Elder Pack and Fisher are the other two sharing a ward with us, and we're basically living as a house of four. We're always going over to their house to eat and study. The members in this ward are so good, they're bringing us so much food because they heard that there are four of us, and we're all very happy to have so much support from our members, especially since we can't make food in our hotel right now.