8/31/2020
Today was an awesome Pday! We got to play basketball with the other Elders for a few hours which is apparently a tradition in this district, so we're going to have a lot of very fun Pdays in the near future. The games of basketball we played today were pretty awesome, I did a lot better than I thought I would that I'd never really competitively played before. I ended up not being a detriment to our team, and had a couple great plays which was fun. We also filmed a video tonight, which was fun. Some of the material was stuff that Johnson and I made but never used, so tonight we assembled it so that we could make use of it in our video. The funniest part of the day was when Elder Morse got a charlie horse during the prayer in our missionwide devotional, he started crying out in pain in the middle of the prayer and begged for "the sweet release of death" which kind of ruined the prayer, but it was a pretty hilarious experience.
9/1/2020
Today was a lot of fun. We had a service project this morning where we learned to channel our inner gardner as we went about the work of removing "deadheads". We gave this guy's yard a complete makeover, alongside the Sisters who we share an area with. The family was really grateful, and we made another connection which was awesome. We taught a couple of lessons today, and restarted our testimony video project in this area, which I'm really excited about. The lessons we shared were really powerful, there were not many dry eyes when we gave our message, it was really cool to see that we could still make some meaningful impact on those members, even if we don't have a ton of investigators to teach. After one of our lessons tonight, we had an old guy call out to us from across the street as we were walking back to our car. As we approached, we started talking to him about the neighborhood, before I saw in his garage a mountain of paintings. Well, it didn't take long for us to form a bond as we began to discuss the painting world, and when I showed him my paintings, he took even more interest in us. He pointed at my heart and said "don't give up painting, I can see you still have a lot of undone work in there". Which was a nice comment, my work felt very inferior to his, but it was nice of him to be so encouraging of me. After our lessons, we had about 15 spare minutes, so we went and dunked on the 7 foot hoops at the local children's park. It must have been quite a sight to see the missionaries at a park, slamming balls through the hoop over and over, but we had a fun time.
9/2/2020
Today was pretty good. We had another service project this morning where we got to help a lady move. We're all getting pretty good at tetris because this is the third (I think?) person we've helped move in the last week. I'm not so sure how I feel about these service projects, you feel good while serving these people for a bit, but your numbers gradually shrink leaving you with fewer and fewer interested members. I guess the real long term "service" would be to scare away the families who are trying to buy the houses of our ward members so that we always have lots of people to teach. Other than service, we didn't make a ton of progress. We tried to work on Facebook, I reached out on a Portuguese speaking group in Colorado, but Facebook has been a little bit dangerous for missionaries lately, so our President told us to back off a bit. We would like to work with our ward members more, but we've called through the entire list twice already, and we're starting to run the risk of bothering them. We had a meeting with our Bishop tonight, but it wasn't everything that we were hoping for, he's struggling with ward-wide communication too, and doesn't have a lot of tips for us. We got some news that the mission is starting to relax COVID rules a bit, though, so that's nice.
9/3/2020
Today was fun. We taught a lesson to a family who, according to Elder Morse, is one of our "three solid families". So we don't have the biggest teaching pools yet, but we do have some incredible members. We printed off the photos of Morse and I today to pass out to our less active members and got the notes all ready, so all that's left to do is address them and pass them out tomorrow. We really hope this goes a long way with connecting us with the less active members of our ward, because this is the last idea I have for getting in touch with them. Tomorrow will probably determine the way that the rest of our transfer goes. If we have a lot of success, the rest of our transfer will be very successful. If we don't have a lot of success, we're going to have a very difficult next few weeks. Today I prayed that we would have dinner, and food randomly showed up at our door, which was nothing short of a miracle.
9/4/2020
Today was a very exciting day, I discovered that my happiness is directly proportional to how many dinners we have, because tonight we had two (I love State-side missions), and I'm twice as happy as normal. Just kidding, we did have two dinners, but I'm happy because of how well everything went today. We got to teach a couple of lessons, and meet with our ward mission leader. When we met with the ward mission leader's family we made some awesome connections with their six kids. The oldest likes to paint, and the youngest is one of the most adorable kids you'll ever meet. Then, later tonight, Sister Whitesides posted her testimony on the ward page! We didn't even follow up yet, and yet she still posted an incredible testimony. We were super excited and made sure to thank her profusely. The Sisters took notice of our success and felt bad that they hadn't had some of the same ideas as us, so we also went over tonight to try to give them some pointers and find ways that they could be creative in their work too. We're going to start to try to practice teaching with them to better our teaching skills and help them with theirs as well. Elder Morse and I tactfully presented our help behind a couple of smoothies Elder Morse had made, and once they accepted the Morse's smoothie trojan horse, they were stuck with the rest of our help as well. We also did a service project today and I pulled out the weirdest weeds, they grew out of these bulbs that were riddled with holes. Those weeds actually looked pretty freaky.
9/5/2020
Today was pretty fun. I got to do a lot of studies today since Elder Morse is preparing to return home and has to do a study called "My Plan". "My Plan" is essentially the mission's way of making sure that everyone goes home trunky, I keep hearing muttering from Morse about pictures of missionaries with babies in their arms. Weird. I also had a prodigal son feast today where, even though I'm wicked, I got to have some awesome food because of a package mix-up where food got delivered to our house, and the owner told us to keep it because it wasn't worth their effort. That was pretty much the modern day equivalent of killing the 'fatted calf'. We also had a really cool lesson and dinner with the Whitesides tonight. The lesson was cool, Elder Morse thanked Sister Whitesides for her testimony while roasting Brother Whitesides and Elder Whitesides for not sharing their testimonies. At dinner I found out Bryan Whitesides grew up in Federal Way, Washington, same as my dad, knew my dad's family, and dated my Aunt Alydia, which was pretty awesome. That was pretty much all we talked about all dinner. They knew my entire family which was pretty freaky/awesome (I haven't decided which yet). We had a great district counsel over Zoom today, since we only listen to them and don't interact much with them the other three Elders and I made some copies of Alma and Amulek coloring pages and colored them in. I drew Alma and Amulek fighting demons, and Alma was super buff. It was a very fun night.
9/6/2020
Today was a blast. Our ward didn't meet today so we got to take the Sacrament with our District. Because today was a fast Sunday I got to devote a lot more time to studying than usual, which was awesome. Fast Sundays are pretty much my favorite days in the mission, these are the days when I learn the most. We had a lot of fun getting to talk to the other missionaries, which was good because I hadn't really connected with them yet, so to start to find some common ground with them was good. We had another incredibly Spiritual dinner where Morse and I gave a thought that blew anything I've ever done before out of the water. Morse and I both have a lot of experience which makes it a lot easier to be confident and speak with the Spirit. Usually a weak missionary is paired with a strong one, but I feel like both Morse and I are pretty strong, and it makes for some awesome moments, and incredible connections with the members. Because we really bring the Spirit in with the messages we share, the members want to hear from us and they want us to be in their homes. Tonight we got told from the Brother we had dinner with that we better start making plans to stop by if something ever falls through. He made us promise multiple times which was really cool, it's a good feeling to be wanted. We also recorded a Come Follow Me video for our ward which was a lot of fun, and we invited the Sisters to star in it too. I don't think they've recorded their part yet, but its okay, they've got a little bit more time until tomorrow night when we post.
Today for a spiritual thought I want to share a miracle that happened this week that shows just how much God is watching out for all of us. We have been strapped for cash these past few weeks and didn't have enough for food in our house. I said a prayer that we would have food to eat, and a box showed up at our house, a misdelivery, of food. We contacted the owner, and they said that there was no way for us to get it to them and told us to enjoy it. That was nothing short of a miracle. God really is watching over all of us, prayers of faith have true power, and as you pray with faith this week, your prayers will be answered as well.
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