The Hastening of the Work (8 August)

Hickory Zone

So this week has been a pretty good week, A super wet one too! Every afternoon or evening dark clouds roll in and it either rains, or comes close to raining. I think it's cooling down, which is good because we now have the bikes for this week… Yuck. In this area I feel like we are always biking, because we kind of are. 

Tuesday was pretty good. We did service at the Corner Table again,  that's always fun. We drove around a lot that day and we stopped in to a less active Hmong family. We talked to the mother/wife outside and tried to ask whether we could come over and teach her family, but there was a slight language barrier and she ended up giving us these weird squash/melon thingies. She gave us a bunch on a plate and looked at us to see our reactions. We both started eating, and we both pretended that they were really good, when in fact they weren't. They tasted like raw pumpkin mixed with zucchini and a little bit of cantaloupe, oh and maybe some cucumber too. I ate the whole plate, which I didn't think was too hard, but wasn't easy, and Elder Garrett couldn't stomach his whole plate. I probably shouldn't have finished my plate because before I knew it she was getting quart sized Ziploc baggies and filling them full of these melon-squash thingies for us to take home and eat. It was hard but I stopped myself from breaking out in laughter. Needless to say we went home and dumped them out on our back lawn for all the interesting critters that live behind the house to eat. That night we met this guy (super old by the way, with a lot of health problems as well) who was baptized by Dale Murphy (a famous baseball player). He also was on a church committee and he came up with the idea of putting the words, "Another Testament of Jesus Christ" on the front of the Book of Mormon. He also contributed to making the two words, "Jesus Christ" in the church's logo, bigger. So that was pretty cool. 

On Wednesday Elder Garrett got sick, so we had to wait it out a little before going out and working. That night a guy in the ward, Brother Scheller (the elders quorum president, and a dentist) took us to a super fancy restaurant and got us each a $32 steak. It was super good😋. I then had a big piece of key lime pie… Really good. That night to work it all off I push mowed a less active lady's yard, in proselyting clothes. 

I sweated a lot, so hopefully that got some weight off of my body. Which is something I really need. At this point in my mission I've almost gained 40 pounds. Pretty scary huh? I was looking at a picture of me and Elder Buffaloe in the MTC and I was a lot skinnier back then, weird to think that was only 10 months ago. Well we have this thing in the mission called "Six months to sexy." Which basically means our last six months are not only devoted to preach the gospel with increased fervor, but to lose a lot of weight so we look good when we go home. So I still have eight months before then so I'm totally fine… For now😬. 

Elders Garrett and Huff with their double chins

Thursday we did service at the soup kitchen again and then on Friday we had zone meeting. 

It was a pretty big deal zone meeting. The whole meeting was taken up by a big new technology initiative training that our mission is participating in. As of right now our mission is one of the few in the entire world that is using Facebook. So the training was basically to brief us on how to properly use Facebook and other technologies on our iPad. I was excited for this training because I've not really known how to use Facebook for good missionary purposes, but now the mission is really pushing us to stay connected with our investigators and connect our investigators with members through apps like Facebook, Facebook messenger, Skype, and others. It's pretty exciting. The Arizona Tempe Mission was the first mission to get this training and it was extremely successful there. So our mission is one of the few others that has this pilot initiative training. 

In zone meeting I participated in a musical number. I'm doing that more and more and it kind of concerns me... It went well. 

After zone meeting I went over to Hickory because we had an exchange with the zone leaders. I went to Hickory with Elder Grieve. He's a good missionary, but he is kind of a stick in the mud. I kind of feel bad for him though because he is a younger missionary than I am and already a leader over a zone. I think it's kind of got to his head. That's why I am kind of happy that I am not in a leadership position because there's a lot of pressure on you and you have to correct other missionaries sometimes. That's not something I want to do. On the other hand though it's weird to think that he hasn't been out as long as I have, that he has had a lot of leadership responsibilities already, yet I have had none. Not something I'm mad about, but something I'm just curious about. 

Well anyways, we did some service for some elderly sister in the Ward. We did some weed whacking for her. She had a battery powered trimmer, I had never seen one of those before. 

That night we had dinner with a Hmong family. They are awesome. We had a good dinner where most of the food was delicious. They had these things they called "bitter watermelon" and oh boy they were bitter, wow! I had never had anything so bitter in my life. Grapefruit has nothing on this melon, yikes. It's supposed to help with diabetes though, so I guess it had some sort of purpose. Sunday started out pretty interestingly. Ward council was very heated yesterday. It's weird to think how young and inexperienced we missionaries are, but how we are heavily involved in the ward's business, and we get to see all the crazy things that go on in Ward council and people ask us about the status of people in the Ward. Being a missionary is a weird calling.  Well, that's about it for the week. We're just chilling here at the church playing games of all sorts with the district. Well, I hope y'all have a great week! Love y'all!