Lots of Stuff

March 30, 2015

Hey everybody! I hope you've all had a great week!

This week for me has actually been kind of slow. We've contacted pretty much all of our less-active referrals and most of our non-member referrals. We still had our investigators to teach, but we are running out people to fill our schedule with. We have a bunch of new referrals coming (and they are for non-members), so that is good. We are just waiting for new info from our ward mission leaders, and there is also a non-member family that one of our senior missionary couples are trying to get warmed up for us. So we are just waiting and trying to do our best in the meantime.

I've also been sick with a cold  the past few days. It hasn't stopped me from doing missionary work, but I felt like garbage doing it. I'm feeling a lot better today, except my voice is completely shot. It's bizarre, trying to talk, and the sound that comes out isn't even remotely what it is supposed to sound like. But I'm on the mend.

As far as my investigators, they are all doing well, except for one who we had to drop, because we can't get an appointment set up and she is pretty much avoiding us. The Hamilton's, the senior missionary couple in Mount Pleasant, UT are going to see if they can get through to her. But other than that things are going great. We did get one new investigator this week, and we're going to be teaching him as well as his parents (less-actives who are interested in becoming active again). Also, we had another baptism this past week! Esmerelda got baptized on Saturday! I did not perform that one though, because I was sick, and the Elders Quorum President was going to perform the baptism anyway. So that's two baptisms in two weeks! Not bad! We still have one other (Isabel) who is on date for the second Saturday in April, and some more who will hopefully be on date for baptism really soon. All we need is more people to teach now and we'd be set!

We did some fun service a few days ago, helping get a new restaurant set up! Helping out at The Pioneer House Restaurant (for that's what it's called) was really cool! It helped us fill an otherwise empty afternoon. The Pioneer House Restaurant is actually a semi-outdoor mini-restaurant that is set up in an old train caboose. So that's cool, and the food is really good too! Brother Mercer, the guy who owns it is just awesome, and he feeds the missionaries for free. He is a cancer survivor and never got to serve a mission, so he wants to help us out as much as he can. He's also just an overall nice person. I hope his restaurant is super successful! The other guy who was there all afternoon was Brother McKenzie, from Scotland. He's super cool, smart, and really hilarious! His Scottish accent is a breath of fresh air too, since probably about 2/3 of the people here speak an interesting dialect of Utahn (it's not like the mild Layton accent of northern Utah) called "San Petian" (derived from San Pete County). The accent is also really strong in some people, and grammar and pronunciation rules are pretty much thrown out the window. It makes the Spanish Fork accent look tame. This is like super rural Spanish Fork on steroids! And don't even get me started on "Utah directions". How anyone finds anything around here is beyond me. Here in San Pete County, "turn left at the dead goat and go straight, but if you turn onto the dirt road by the broken down truck, you gone to far" could actually pass for a set of directions, and we have heard similar! I'm not complaining about any of this, of course, I just find it funny. Anyway, I digressed a whole bunch there. Helping out at the restaurant was really fun. What we were helping with was putting together the restaurant sign, constructing from scratch a base on which to attach the sign, and getting both the base and the sign onto the roof and securing it. Technically it might have been a bit unsafe, lifting heavy things on top of a narrow roof (and my epic Batman jump off the roof on the deck side, about 7 feet down, might have been a bit unsafe) but nobody got hurt, and we all had a good time.

There is a new Easter video that the Church has recently put out called "Because He Lives". It is two minutes of awesome! Definitely look it up if you haven't already seen it, and be sure to share it as well.

I had the opportunity to give another talk on Sunday. This time, my topic was Prophets and General Conference. I won't go into too much detail, but basically, prophets are really important and we should follow them. We have the words of the prophets in the scriptures, the teachings and sermons given by the latter-day prophets, and we have have 15 men today, namely the First Presidency of the Church, and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who are prophets, seers, and revelators. President Thomas S. Monson is the president of the church, and is God's chief prophet on the Earth today. There is a quote by President Harold B. Lee that I'm going to paraphrase. A living prophet is more important that a dead one, is basically what he said. When it comes to prophets, President Monson, the prophet right here, right now, is the most important source of God's word that we have. So watching General Conference is a very special and important opportunity, when we get to hear those 15 men speak to us. I think it is cool that Conference is on Easter this year. I can't think of a better way to celebrate Christ's Resurrection than by listening the voice of His servants.

Well, that's all this week. Happy Easter everybody! Easter is one of my three favorite holidays (next to Christmas and a little bit a head of US Independence Day) and I hope everyone else enjoys it too! I miss you all! Have a great week!

-Elder Oswald