My Side Quest: 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!