I'm a bit reluctant to use this picture that Elder Anderson sent. A family of investigators gave he and his companion some green tea without realizing that members of our church don't drink it. I guess these Elders think its pretty funny and decided to make a Christmas card out of it!
Elder Anderson's organic basil plant had some flies on it, so after watering the plant and watching the flies scatter, he created this greenhouse to allow his plants to receive light, but to block the flies from returning to live on his plants.
The COVID-friendly way to prepare Terere, a Brazilian drink.
Terere district party.
12/8/2020
Today was a lot of fun. We had a few lessons today with members, and even had one with our friends, the Wonderful family. Today was a very important day, because I made Brazilian Rice and Beans from scratch today, and it turned out really well! I was very proud of it, I took a bunch of ingredients that weren’t edible individually, and they came together in a beautiful way for the meal I survived off of for eight months. I was asked by my mission today to do a technical write-up of one of the applications we use: MaaS 360. It’s an app that’s used to control what content we as missionaries have access to on our phones, and I was very proud of the writeup I did. I felt a lot like my dad, for writing such a quality piece about the functions, abilities, and limitations of this program. I’ve gotten pretty good at identifying the flaws in these programs, and so our mission seemed very interested in my knowledge of MaaS 360 and insights as to how to improve it. The lessons that we had today were a lot of fun. We ended up playing a game that we usually only play with kids to get interaction from them with a family that were all high school and college aged kids, plus the mom and dad. No one was ecstatic about the game except for the dad; And he was ecstatic about it. We had a lot of fun in those lessons and loved seeing people take such an interest in what we were teaching.
12/9/2020
Today was a lot of fun. We spent a long time driving around, and it was all for the Wonderful family. We were pretty disappointed tonight, because we found out where that family lived, they live over on the opposite side of the city, which means that they’re outside of our area. Still, it’s God who gives and God who takes away, we were able to do the job that He wanted us to do. In the course of a week we were able to go from not knowing this family at all, to having their kids on date, and now we’ll get them passed off to the missionaries who are right for them. We drove around today to pick up some Books of Mormon to give away to them, we needed six so that we could give each member of the family a personal note in theirs. The Wonderful family outdid us, though. They gave both of us Christmas gifts, which were incredible. They also gave us a lot of food, and so we’re stocked for a good amount of time now. They also gave us green tea. We’re going to have to have our pass off lesson to the new Elders be about the Word of Wisdom…
12/10/2020
Today was one of the best days ever. Elder McKasson from my last mission and I are in the same Zone, and we found out that due to one of our district members leaving today that we would be doing a combined district council together. The immediate response was to have a Terere party. Now, we used to have this drink called Terere at a good number of our district counsels back in Manaus. Some of my favorite counsels were done with Terere in hand. Terere is a big culture thing, it’s a flavored cut up leaf that you pour water or a juice through, and then drink just the water or the juice. This is really popular in Manaus, because the erva (cut up leaves) can be reused so many times, is so flavorful, and ice water is relatively easy to make, which makes for a sustainable refreshing drink that everyone enjoys, especially when you live in constant 90 degree weather. When McKasson told me he was going to be bringing that erva, I knew that this was our once in a lifetime opportunity to give the CDSM (Colorado Denver South Mission) a taste of the jungle, so we engineered up a way for everyone to share a drink in a COVID safe way. Terere usually involves sharing a straw and a cup, which is like, the least COVID safe thing ever, but this morning I whipped up a special cup that would let the gallon of juice I made filter down into a disposable cup below, we made it COVID safe, and gave everyone their own cup and their own straws. It was pretty awesome, and everyone really enjoyed it. They also probably liked it because I made up some of the juice that the patriarch taught us how to make that greatly enhances Terere. These districts have now been taught the law of the jungle.
12/11/2020
Today was a lot of fun! We had a couple of lessons and a lot of stuff going on. We got to walk Sister Thompson’s dogs today which was a lot of fun, and the Sisters apparently walked her dogs later as well, so those dogs got a lot of exercise today. Our conversations with Sister Thompson are always fun because she is such an avid student of the Gospel, she’s really interested in everything that we have to say. She told me today that I was her hero, and that melted my heart. Later tonight we got to have a fun joint dinner with most of our district. We had to distance for COVID, but all of us, except for Collins, were there getting our dinner at the exact same time, so it worked out really well. We then did a roleplay with one of our Sisters who wanted to practice lessons with us. She didn’t feel very comfortable teaching the lessons, and so we listened to her speak for a while, and then Gomez and I did a joint roleplay as an example. The roleplays were very beneficial for the Sister, and it was cool to get to help out someone with something that was such a strength for Gomez and I. We then had the greatest District service project. We all were cutting out these pictures to make little Christmas picture books, and they ended up looking pretty great. There’s still a lot to do, so we’ll end up doing some more after I’m done writing and during our mission wide training tomorrow.
12/12/2020
Today was a great day. We had a big recording session this morning where we noted all the progress that we had made in the last couple of weeks. Sometimes I procrastinate too much, so we took time to catch up today. We also had a training this morning on being better teachers which was cool, because we did a lot of teaching roleplays today. I roleplayed the message of the Restoration with my companion, and he acted as a devout Catholic. Sometimes I had to remind him what he believed in because he wasn’t perfect at remembering everything, but he did a really good job and we had a lot of fun. We also roleplayed a lesson with our Sisters tonight which was very beneficial for all of us. We had a couple of lessons today with the older members of our ward, and took the gift of Terere to a widow. She was very excited to try the “jungle juice” but later decided that it was an acquired taste. We then had a really awesome treat, my family had dinner delivered to us tonight from Cafe Rio, and that was so nice, Elder Gomez said this was the second fullest he’d ever been in the mission (the first time was when he ate three dinners). Today was a very busy and effective day.
12/13/2020
Today was my birthday! I didn’t think much could top my last birthday, it was spent in Brazil and characterized by the number of investigating families that sacrificed to celebrate the day with me. However, today was an equally amazing, uniquely touching day. We had an older couple break down in tears, thanking us for our service and what we do for the ward. They were the one family who knew that it was my birthday (they asked if they could bring us food last night, and I told them my parents had taken care of us because of the special occasion), and they offered us an incredible feast and cake, stating that they had wished they could have given that very same thing to their son and daughters on their birthdays when they were serving missions, and so it kind of felt like repaying Heavenly Father for the way He had watched out for their missionaries. Today was also a great day because I got to talk to President Chipman for an extended period of time. Later tonight, at the one, tiny moment when we were getting dinner from the fridge and the Elders we share a car with, and the Sisters we share a ward with were also grabbing their dinners from the fridge, Elder Collins gave us a call. I picked up and he immediately started singing “happy birthday”. My knee-jerk response was to hang up (I know, I’m a terrible person, but I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it), but unfortunately they had all heard, and so we spent the next ten minutes celebrating. A few minutes into the unplanned festivities, the Monument ward Primary President walked into the room because she had heard the joint singing of “happy birthday”. She promptly started it up again, and then informed the rest of the ward that it was my birthday, and that we all needed to celebrate it. That lady has connections. We had people signing up for lessons left and right, and somehow had treats dropped off to us within the hour. All in all, it was a very fun night.
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