Sunday, October 26, 2014

The typical meal

This week, October 23rd, we got to go to the stake center to have a zone preparation day. All of the missionaries in our zone met at the church and we had a pumpkin carving contest. I did not participate because I want to have a great looking pumpkin carved right before Halloween. So I am going to wait a few more days.

After the pumpkin carving contest we had dinner with Brother G. We had a hearty meal of a freshly hunted turkey, cranberries, mashed potatoes. It's a pretty typical meal here in rural Montana. There is almost always some sort of meat with mashed potatoes and gravy. As we were about to leave he had us follow him to his freezer, because he needs to get some more freezer space soon because elk season is almost here. So we went out to the freezer and he gave us some black bear meat from the bear that he shot and killed last week Now at home we have black bear meat, elk country smoked sausage, elk pepperoni sticks, elk cubes, and bacon.

Right after our dinner with Brother G., we had a lesson with one of our recent converts D. She is taking the new member lessons from us. Her husband is not a member yet, but we made sure he was there because as we were teaching D. we were going to teach J., her husband, the discussions. As the lesson went on, we both noticed that he was getting pretty emotional. During the part of the lesson where we talked about the first vision with Joseph smith, we noticed that he was tearing up and he was about to cry because he was feeling the spirit so much. So it was at that time that we both knew that he needed to be  committed to be baptized. So we did exactly that, when we asked J, D got all anxious about it and when he said yes she let out a huge sigh of relief. It was the perfect lesson because we did everything that we are asked to do. I can't wait to see him get baptized.

That very same night we went over to our Ward mission leader’s house to explain to him what happened with J’s lesson. His littlest daughter kept running around and having fun. Then Elder W pulled out his laser pointer that he uses to play with cats. So he was shining it all around and she was chasing after it trying to catch it. We were all laughing so hard because it was really funny. Then we shined it on her and she freaked out because she thought it was a bug and it made it even funnier until she started crying and then we felt bad. When would shine it on somebody else she would laugh because it was on them and not her!!!! We had a good time there and our ward mission leader is really excited for J as much as we are.

On Tuesday we had dinner with a member. It was a pretty good dinner; it was fried chicken and pheasant, mashed potatoes and gravy!! You guessed it! Typical Montana dinner! We went over to the G family on Wednesday night. We knocked on the door and he said, "Elder W! Come in!" It was funny how he knew it was us without even looking.  We asked him how he knew and he said that he doesn't really have a lot of friends so he figured it was us.

 We took some pictures for some #bookofmormoning. There is not one attached but the caption was, "If you ever feel like you are lost in the world, turn to the book of Mormon for guidance.  It will help you understand your purpose in life and where you should turn." the picture was basically us reading the book of Mormon in the middle of nowhere because that would represent the "lost" part of the picture. If you can picture that in your head.

On Friday we helped one of our investigators, J (#2), take apart his engine for his VW car. We took everything off the motor till it was just the block. Then we even took all of the parts off inside the block. It was pretty hard. We also helped the B family set up Halloween decorations, and also helped brother B put a timing belt back on their car. Let's say that we learned a lot about cars in the past two days.

This Sunday we had stake conference and the whole zone got to sing a special hymn.  We sang high on a mountain top. It was really good. President and sister Mecham were there and they spoke and the spirit was so strongly there.

Well that was my week and I hope yours was just as exciting if not better.

#BookofMormoning

This week , October 13th, we traveled a lot! We had to drive into Billings on Monday because we have to email and shop and do the other things that we absolutely cannot do out in our small town. Then we had to go in Tuesday because we had to go get our car estimated for hail damage. We have gotten some hail storms lately.  Wednesday we had our district meeting and we HAVE to go in for that. Then Thursday we had to go into town again to meet at the church for our missionary meeting with the ward mission leader. Friday we had to go in for a Facebook/online training. We basically went over the rules for Facebook and some of the things that we can do now. Something that I like that was added to the rules was #bookofmormoning. Basically what book of Mormoning is is that you take a picture of something that relates to a scripture in the book of Mormon and you have a picture of the book of Mormon in the picture. Then you put the photo on Facebook with the scripture as the description and then at the end, you put: #bookofmormoning. If you are confused even from my description then I invite you to go to Facebook and search for #bookofmormoning, and it will have tons of examples. I’ll have one picture of a book of mormoning for next week since I never got one this week. Remember to have the Book of Mormon in the photo!

I had the opportunity to play in primary AGAIN this week. it looks like they do not have a piano player for primary and they have the primary program not this Sunday because its stake conference but the next Sunday and I might have to play for that as well if they do not find a player! We were finally able to get in with one of our investigators this week that we haven’t seen since I got here seven weeks ago. It has been really hard to get in contact with them. It is mostly a hit and miss situation.