Elder Anderson and his district were able to go on a hike on their Pday to the Colorado National Monument. Elder Anderson loved this hike and the amazing rock formations.
9/21/2020
Today was a great Pday. We were pretty busy trying to make a video for our Facebook page for our ward, but it turned out really well, it was well worth the effort. On top of that, Morse and I got to play basketball, and have a shootout with Nerf guns. We had a blast, so we're definitely going to make sure dart tag is one of our District Pday activities soon. We had a couple of meetings tonight to discuss how the development of our ward has been going. I was glad we had them since we've been struggling a lot, and at least got to bring up what it was that we were struggling with to our Zone Leaders.
9/22/2020
Today was great, we had an all mission meeting this morning and it was a lot of fun to see so many of my friends on that call. We were running low on time today because of how much we had to do, so we went to Sonic for lunch. They're very kind to the missionaries, they give us our food for free. Because of Sonic's kindness we were able to grab lunch quickly and get both the Redlands Elders and ourselves to our separate areas in about 30 minutes. Morse and I worked on a drawing for a Facebook post today and it's turning out really well, considering that I've only put two hours into it so far and it's looking to be a three hour project, it's very good quality. I also have been practicing hymns to use as background music in our Facebook videos, and today it came up that I don't know anything about music theory. So I learned music theory from a drummer (Morse). He taught me some tips of things to look for in songs, and that was very satisfying to learn. We had a very long dinner tonight, but it turned out okay because we liked the family a lot. We're only supposed to be at dinner for one hour and we were there for two because they asked us to come over when they started preparing dinner. We didn't know we were going to be there for so long, but we think it had been a while since the last time that they had missionaries and just wanted to get to know us, so it was still a pretty good use of our time. I connected very well with the wife who doesn't use recipes when she's cooking, because I also don't use recipes. She was ecstatic to teach me what she could about cooking. That was also a cool family to visit because when we walked up to their house we were greeted by some very cool sights. Their daughter riding a horse in their front yard probably should have been what caught my attention, but instead what I thought was cool was the door decoration they had of the Hebrew word written: Shin, Daleth, and Yod, signifying "mighty" or "powerful". Unfortunately none of them spoke Hebrew, but it was cool to me to find a little snippet of the language I had been studying as a greeting. That family also gave us a taste of their 'finest milk', they brought out shot glasses and shared some of their unpasteurized 12% with us. Trying a taste of milk that rich in shot glasses felt like the edgiest thing that I'll get to do as a missionary.
9/23/2020
Today was a lot of fun. We had a service project this morning where we went to help a guy in our ward clear tumbleweeds out of his lot. I was trying to imagine what my ideal service project would be as we were driving out there and had no clue what we were doing before I finally decided that my ideal service project would involve a shovel in some way. Thus, I was pretty excited when I found out we would be digging up tumbleweeds today. The tumbleweeds in Colorado are huge, but really satisfying to remove since this massive plant only stems from a single root, and so it feels really cool to unearth such massive plants without doing much work. The guy we were helping out today had a three year old son named "Matthew". That little guy was adorable, he would follow me around everywhere, he had a little shovel and was actually able to remove a couple small tumbleweeds all by himself. I was very grateful for the help he provided to me in what would have been otherwise impossible weeds to remove, but thanks to my cheering on of his three-year-old muscles, and my enjoyment of child labor, we were able to get a lot of work done together. He really reminded me of my little brother, Matthew, especially when he stopped to point out to me the tractor on the road. The dad thought it was pretty cute that I had a little brother almost his same age with his same name. After our project we had a district counsel, then I made lunch for Morse and I, and then we went to work at the church. I finished another drawing for our Facebook page, this one was fun because I spent about three and a half hours on it over the course of the last few days (so hardly any time at all) and it still looked presentable (kind of). We had dinner with the Case family tonight, in which we were told that they were all VERY excited for the Elders to visit them. We had asked the dad beforehand what kind of message he would like us to share and he requested one about "obedience and consequences", so we talked a little bit about the joy that comes from obedience. The kids loved it (much to my surprise), and the dad said in awe as we were leaving, "You Elders are the best". It was cool to see that he really meant it. Obviously we didn't do anything special, we just gave the message that was put into our hearts, but since we're not able to have a lot of interaction with families now, those compliments were very welcome. It can be hard to feel like you're being effective when your options are so limited to speak to people, but at least the interactions we do have Morse and I are able to make use of. We really, really like the Case family, and so it felt good to see that they really liked us too.
9/24/2020
Today was great, we taught two lessons, had a service project, and a mission tour led by Elder Ringword (I think? We only heard his name once, he spoke to us over Zoom call and instead of the call showing his name, it said "COB257", so for all intents and purposes I'll probably refer to him as Elder COB257). His wife is one of President Nelson's daughters, and both of them gave fantastic messages to us. The service project we had today was fun, we trimmed up a bush, but it was a pretty big bush and the lady we were doing our project for wanted it cut back at the base, so I dove into the bush and went to town on it for the space of an hour. It took a lot of scrubbing in the shower afterwards, but I finally got the smell of pine off of my arms and out of my hair. Pine isn't necessarily a bad smell, but there were a lot of dead bugs in there, so it was the foresty pine/bug carcass smell that I wasn't very fond of. The lessons we taught also went super well today, the Spirit was so strong in both and we got references in both! We hadn't gotten any references since we'd gotten here, and now we got two in a day, we're very happy.
9/25/2020
Today was a good day. We filmed a video for a Sunday devotional our zone is putting together, and it turned out really well! We were talking about the importance of our trials and how they can empower us to help others. We shared the story of Alma the younger and how because of the events in his life he turned not only his life around, but was able to help all of his sons as well. This video took us a LOT of takes, but it turned out very well in the end. We also tried working in the public library for the first time. We can only have one companionship in the church at a time, so going to the library allows us and other companionships to get more work done. The library was also a super nice place. When we work at the church we're the only ones there, so it's pretty quiet, but library quietness is just a whole new level of quiet. Morse got a personal library card, and I'm thinking about getting one that's tied to the area email so that any future Elders and Sisters that come here can have access to the library as well. We also got to have a lesson with the Whitesides today which was just a rehashed summary of what we talked about in our video today, which they really seemed to like. The Whitesides just sent their son into the mission field so I think Sister Whitesides really liked having us over because it reminded her of her Elder.
9/26/2020
Today was great! We had a service project this morning where we got to pull weeds, make huge wire bundles, and move heavy objects like giant pipes and rocks. Our service project was with the Case family, and we got to share a message with them as well, which they really seemed to enjoy. Afterwards we had a training from our Mission President where we were taught that we didn't need to be afraid of extending the baptismal invitation. Morse and I lamented that we would love to be bold in our invitations, had we any investigators to be bold with. We got to do some Facebook work today, another progress check-up with our Zone Leaders where we found out that the mission collectively has no hope for our area, and suggested just studying for the remainder of this transfer. We weren't ecstatic about that. We also met the coolest members though, tonight. The Nelson family invited us over for dinner, and much to my delight, had returned from serving a mission in Portugal a little more than two years ago. They didn't speak a lot of Portuguese, but they understood me when I spoke which was pretty cool. It was pretty funny when Sister Nelson said that they had served in Portugal, and then I asked them in Portuguese how long it had been since they served. She replied back in pretty good Portuguese and then very accusingly demanded, "wait, how do you know Portuguese?"
9/27/2020
Today was a pretty slow Sunday, other than our District Sacrament meeting, we didn't have a lot of contact with anyone, but it was a good day for work. Most of our work time was spent on Facebook trying to do what work we could. We didn't have a lot of success come out of our work today, but at least we were able to put ourselves out there and try. One of the more notable things that I did today was a large portrait of our mission president in chalk on one of our church chalkboards. It turned out pretty well so I sent a picture of it in our Zone chat. Then, during our devotional tonight, Morse and I made sure that President Rees's massive face was directly over us. We got some air time on the Zoom call, as soon as the camera switched to us I started getting messages about the "artwork" I had done. Everyone thought it was pretty great, hopefully President liked it too, I would be very disappointed if I had to erase it too soon.
After writing this I realized I completely forgot to include the spicy chicken incident. What happened was this: One night this week we didn't have dinner. Morse wanted to remedy this by going to Buffalo Wild Wings, one of the perks of being a stateside missionary. I made up a dinner so I wouldn't have to spend extra money, but we still went to get some food for him. They have a type of sauce made out of Carolina Reapers, which Morse was very happy about because he really likes spicy food. I've seen from Morse that a lot of his happiness comes from doing dumb things with his friends, so when he asked if I wanted to suffer through those wings with him, I thought "time to be a good comp" and accepted one of those devil pieces of chicken. From the moment I ate it I started hiccupping uncontrollably (a reaction to the spice, go figure, that had never happened for me before) and my eyes started watering a lot. It was weird to be so emotionally distant from what my bodies reaction was, because I wasn't in any emotional turmoil, yet everything about my appearance said I was going through immense suffering. After about five minutes I was fine and ready to do it again.
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