Yeah, But I Don't Fear Man

This was an even better week than usual. We've had lots of opportunities for service and teaching and all kinds of wonderful things.

On Tuesday, we had the opportunity to ride our bikes! I love riding bikes. I don't get to very often. We rode over to a guys house and dug him up a good flower bed. We also went with him to the dump, got yelled at by some workers (and it wasn't our fault) and trimmed up a tree real good. I was pulling on a rope to keep the tree from landing on the fence. It worked! It landed on my head instead. I was scared for a short while, but there wasn't any blood. I also used my lifeguard training to do some tests. I never got a head ache, I never went numb, and my pupils dilated like they should when introduced to light, so I was fine. Thanks, legions of guardian angels.

We helped two different families move this week. One of them had a sword that I got to play with for a moment. The other one wasn't ready at all, and it was a whole lot of waiting. However, she really grateful that we could help because we were all she had. So that was good.

We were called to hospital twice to go give a blessing. On our way out from one of them, we ran into a guy who asked with us to come with him to help give his dad a blessing. We weren't able to get near his room for about 20 minutes because someone else was dying. When we finally got near, a nurse yelled at us to stop because she recently got punched pretty hard by him. The guy was going crazy and it took 12 men to hold him down. She refused to let us go in there to give a blessing. Oh well. 

We have a great investigator who is 14. I like going over to see him, especially since he knows parkour. His mom is a less active member who wants to return. When we visited, his grandma was there who used to be a member. She is now heavily against the church and searched up all the anti material that she could. She yelled at us for like 30 minutes and wouldn't let us utter more than two words. It was quite the experience and I was shaking. A member came with us who also had no luck saying anything to her. It was a miserable experience and I didn't want to go see her ever again. The grandma was yelling at us saying that she didn't believe we had to go and said we were just scared because she proved us wrong. We just took the mom and went outside, bore testimony of the truth of the church, then set up an appointment for tomorrow. When we drove past, grandma was outside, seemingly waiting for us. We drove past and then around the block, wanting to go home. Neither of us wanted to speak with her again. It was then when I decided we needed to pray. After a prayer, I told my companion that "I may be nervous to see her again, Yeah, but I don't fear man, I fear God." And we put on our big boy pants and marched straight over. We parked that car, knocked on that door, and out leaves grandma. We were able to teach an incredible lesson and gave him a soft baptismal invite. We were blessed after the trial of our faith, and it felt good to know we have God and His angels on our side.

My favorite investigator has some really big memory problems, but we have promised him that if he reads from the Book of Mormon, his memory will start to return. I promise each and every one of you, the power of the book is real, for this man is legitimate recovering his memory. It's slow but sure. He amazes me every day. In one of our lessons, we had the privilege to extend him the baptismal date of August 25th. He may not remember super well, but the next day when we saw him, he told us just how excited he was for that day. 

That's about all of the crazy stuff that happened to us this week. It was a great one, and I am so glad that the temperature is now averaging around 80 degrees. 

Let's keep it up, Mr Sun! 

I love riding my bike!

Have you seen my videos I've posted on Facebook?

Helping in the yard

The Meat Mountain

I don't know what Idaho thinks it's doing right now, but it's returning back to winter and I'm not pleased. I saw this man the other day doing a pretty fancy dance. He must've placed a curse on Coeur d'Alene.

We were out doing service for a part member family one day. It's a lot of fun. They neglected raking in the fall and there's just a ton of stuff in the backyard, so whenever I lift something up, I discover new specimens. I've found a lot of crazy huge slugs never before seen by man. New spiders are being visited by death administered by me. Crazy moths are welcomed by Mr. Sun and no man knoweth what half of these bugs even are. The man of this family loves fishing, and he usually brings home plenty for the family. What they don't eat is put in a vacuum bag and frozen. The woman decided that some fish would be perfect to put in the garden. I watched in curiosity as she cracked some eggs and poured them in the ground. Then she pulled out a large bag of fish. That's when things got intense.

"Valerie, no!!" The man cried. His mustache flopped back into place and his thick eyebrows lifted, revealing his terrified face."

"Gil, these fish have been in the freezer since 2013! You won't miss them!" She rebuked while pulling a pair of scissors from her pocket. The thin blades gripped the bag and began to tear it apart.

"Stop, don't do it!" He desperately called while shuffling over to her. But it was too late. A fish had fallen into the hole with a fatal thud. A second fish fell into the next hole. Each one which departed from the bag dropped his moral until he was a broken man. The woman pushed some dirt over the fish, barely leaving any of its cold scales in sight.

The man was now fallen to the ground. I put an arm on his shoulder. "Yeah. I don't like shake and bake that much, either."

So anyways, the week was pretty swell, despite needing to bust out the thermals twice. We found a new investigator and have two more people ready to meet with us who seem very solid. There was one lesson we were teaching that a lady was just blown away by. She told me that after I testified, I started to glow and kept glowing. After a few more minutes, my companion glowed with me. That was pretty neat.

One of my best friends back at home introduced me into a legendary sandwich called the meat mountain. One day, we were too hungry to eat mortal food, so we pulled up to the drive through of Arbys. She asked what she could get for me.

"Yes, I'd like the meat mountain."

"...what?"

"Mmmmhmmm, the meat mountain."

"One second... ok, my manager just told me what that is. I don't think you want that."

"I'd like the meat mountain, please."

"Okkkkk, but I warned you."

Anyways, that meat mountain didn't stand a chance against me. It wasn't a difficult challenge at all. 

I've decided I have a new favorite investigator. He had a stroke and some other problems so he has some serious memory issues. I was a special needs youth counselor back at home, and so this is perfect! It wasn't easy at first, but we've been working hard as we can to help him. We got him a notebook and we help him take notes to help him remember. He was even given a blessing which promised him the gradual return of his memory and I've seen it manifest in him. He can't normally remember what he had for breakfast, but he was able to tell us about his entire day! It is so wonderful to see him every time, and he's made it to church three weeks in a row now. I'm glad to have the chance to work with him. 

Winco is a store I wasn't familiar with back at home. You can buy food in bulk and get it rather cheaply. I was told oatmeal is good for you. I guess I got a little carried away because I own 6 pounds of oatmeal now. Whups. 

So that's just about it for this week! The church is true and Jesus loves you ;)

A young man joined us on a visit

The Meat Mountain

Thanks Mom for new socks!

The City Is Ours!

Good gravy, this week has been a killer. First of all, I had to say goodbye to Elder Stuart. I'm getting better at not crying at the loss of a companion. I only shed tears of manliness once this time around. I've got a new companion, Elder Glidewell, who has been out for like 16 months. Next, it decided to be really cold and eventually snowed! What's going on, Idaho?? Our area book deleted a whole bunch of upcoming visits, and that was a nightmare. I got so stressed out from it that all emotions died and I had to sit down in an euphoria for like an hour. But enough about my problems, let's get to the good stuff. 

So, there is a rule in my mission which drives me to the brink of insanity, which is we can't have couches in our apartment. We just have super uncomfortable chairs. We were doing service at a donation center when I found one beautiful couch for 5 dollars. It was cheap because they had many couches and this one wasn't leather or anything. I knew I had to buy it. I got up to the register to find out that it was a half off sale! No way, boys, I just bought a couch for $2.65!! I could hardly contain my excitement. We called upon the ward mission leader to show up with his car, only to find out that it just barely didn't fit. I was devastated, but I knew that there was a way. We found out the the feet could be unscrewed and we slid that bad boy right into the DM's of the heaven sent Pathfinder. We then drove it all the way to our apartment, and past our apartment *sobs* and over to a member who's been asking around for a couch. It was hard to give my beautiful couch away, but he was so grateful, and I knew it'd be taken care of. It was just nice knowing that for the first time in my life, I was the proud owner of a beautiful couch.

We have one investigator who is super flaky. He likes to tell us that he was about to take a nap or some excuse like that, so when I showed up with Glidewell yesterday, as soon as he opened the door, I said, "Hey, we've got a new guy so I guess you better let us in." And he was like, "yeah, ok." That was hilarious and awesome. We got to teach a pretty swell lesson because of it. 

I am so sore right now. Elder Stuart told me that if you drink a protein thing after working out, you get more muscles than you normally would have. I decided to do some serious working out. I pushed myself more than usual, pounded 30 grams of protein, and am still paying the price 4 days later. 

Missionary work is pretty odd to me. Some days are so incredibly hard. After a particularly awful night of sleep and lots of stress from losing important information, I felt like I could barely do anything. This is a somewhat common experience which I've had a couple times a month each month. Every single time I put on my big boy pants and work anyways, great things happen. This is the case again. It was such a difficult morning but the day yielded great results. One of my favorite parts of it was the ability to go to the hospital and give a man on his death bed a blessing. It was a really spiritual experience, and it is really special to me, so I won't go into detail on it, but I was glad God loved us enough to trust us to help one of His sons. 

We were also able to visit many people and help in lots of good work. To my complete surprise and devastation, I lost two of my friends to transfers. One was supposed to stay, but left last minute. Now, not only are me and Glidewell the only missionaries in the entire city of Coeur d'Alene, but we are also assigned all three wards. We literally can go anywhere in the city with a population of over 45,000 people, and we also inherited some more investigators from my friends ward they were working in. It reminds me of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, where we learn that Harry is now an overworked man in the Ministry of Magic. Not sure completely why, I'm just in a Potter mood. I can honestly say most days, "mischief managed."

There's not much else to report on for this week. It was ultimately a good week, and though I'll miss my friend Elder Stuart, I know I'll still see him around. I'm in Idaho still. Never thought I'd be going to Idaho on my mission, but here am I. I hit my 9 month mark here, and now I've been in this place for half of my mission so far. Anyways, if you made it this far, thanks for reading!

We love bowling on P-day

Check out these clouds

Awesome Couch

Elder Ruth and Elder Glidewell

Farewell Elder Stuart!

Goodbye, Elder Stuart!

We got transfer calls. I get to stay here for a fourth transfer and Elder Stuart is headed to Canada. What a swell week. We have been just full of appointments the entire transfer and so we have been not able to drive the car super far. We had a lot of miles left over at the end of the month, so we decided to go where no missionary from this area had ever gone before. It was a boon adventure! It was a lot of fun. We drove like an hour and a half away down to the furthest reaches of the lake to try and find people to teach. One person was a potential investigator who is a snowbird, so they weren't home. While I had Elder Stuart write a note for them, I learned that I am strong enough to lift a Corolla off of its wheels. Boys. 

We also found a pretty neat potential investigator on the search of a member who moved a while ago. He has a dog that attacks rocks? He threw some rocks for us to see. That son of a gun leaps through the air and catches them in his teeth and chases when you throw them. We traveled around the boons and explored three times this week.

Two of our on date investigators dropped us this week. They explained that they couldn't believe in a God who would tell them that they can't drink beer. They also lied about the content of a video we showed them, which shows how God's commandments are given out of love and keep us safe. Maybe they'll come around eventually, but for now, rest in peace. I was incredibly amused because later that day, we got two new investigators who are actually pretty solid. Nice!

One of our new investigators is so funny, I love this man. He's got some shaggy hair and a beard, so you can't really see his mouth. But whenever you say something he agrees with, his eyes beam and he gives you a double thumbs up. We brought him to church yesterday and he had a good time. Elder Stuart was on the stand getting ready to speak and the investigator had to bail for an emergency bathroom break, so I shot Elder Stuart a peace sign and bailed. He ran off the stand because he didn't think it was in line with the rules for me to be away. We're not really sure? 

Man, two of our investigators are neighbors. One is a girl, so we teach her on her porch. We were just minding our own business with her when her neighbor staggers over, drunker than ever. He didn't even recognize us! But he kept inviting her to the bar, and we were like, "go home! You're drunk!" We eventually told him we'd be over at his place in 5 minutes. He staggered away and forgot about us, so we returned to our lesson. 

We got to go to the Temple this week. I normally end up in the back, so by the time I get into the celestial room, everyone else has been there for a while and wants to go. I made sure I was in the second row. Yes! It was a really spiritual experience for me and I learned some way sweet stuff. It's always a good time when we get to go to the Temple. Afterwords we went to Costa Vida, where missionaries get 60% off food. I was so excited that I got two enchiladas and a tres leches. So good! 

Bowling on P-Day

Good Stuff

Spokane Temple