The Fires of St. George

June 22, 2015

Hello everybody!

Quite a bit has happened. I'm getting better adjusted to my new area. I still really miss the Mt. Pleasant area, but I'm getting used to Enoch, and I do feel like I belong here. This is also a rather pretty area as well, so that's a plus. It kind of reminds me of a cross between Logan and Blanding.

This has been an interesting week, and on a scale of 1-10 of how exhausted I am, I'd have to say 11. For the most part this week has actually been rather uneventful. We did have good lessons with our few investigators, and picked up a new investigator, but the vast majority of the week has been tracting. We basically drove around our area contacting our referrals, less active referrals, and people from our area book records and a couple other lists. If there were several people nearby, we would tract on foot (we actually did that most evenings). I really hate tracting sometimes. A couple hours is one thing, but nearly all day, everyday is rather painful. Especially since most people were either not home or wanted nothing to do with us. A couple of them were actually rather rude too (which is kind of rare in Utah from my experience). It got us almost nowhere, so it really felt like more of a beat-down, than anything else. I know this is something every missionary experiences, and honestly, I'm a lot more fortunate than other missionaries serving in tougher places (like Europe). But it still doesn't make me dislike it any less. Anyway, enough of my sob story. At least we're teaching some people. And I'm confident that will grow. When I first started in Mt. Pleasant the work was really slow. But then we got it going pretty strong. I'm confident that Enoch West will be a similar experience. I just hope it picks up sooner than later!

Our lesson with the Lawsons went really well. We were teaching The Plan of Salvation and it kind of blew their minds (in the best way possible). They had always been taught that little children who die

without baptism are lost. They had also always been taught that there are only two places to go after you die (Heaven or Hell). However, we believe that little children are all saved in Christ (that's why we don't baptize children until they are 8), and that there are different degrees of glory in the next life that we go to depending on our righteousness and adherence to Christ's gospel, and this is because

even if we do not make it to Eternal Life (Heaven), God still loves all of us and wants us to be as happy as possible. Fire and Brimstone really isn't His style. Sister Lawson was rather giddy about all that. I think that is one of the things I love most about being a missionary. I've always known this stuff, so it never really blew me away. But watching investigators realize how wonderful God is and His plan for us, helps me to see it from their perspective as well. Through them, I can sort of experience the joy and awe of realizing those great truths.

On Tuesday, we had Zone Conference. The Cedar Zone was combined with the St. George East Zone for that and we all met in St. George. It was really good. It was also really long. The meeting itself lasted from 9:00 to about 3:30. And we had to be there an hour and a half early for vehicle inspection. So we were in St. George pretty much all day. We covered several topics in the meeting. One of them had to do with our cars. We just got TIWI devices installed, which monitor our driving to make sure we don't speed or do anything stupid/dangerous with the mission vehicles. If we do, the device will warn us, and if we persist it will send a report to the Mission President. If a missionary gets three reports, he loses his driving privileges for the rest of his mission. The church is really cracking down on that. President Center also gave an instruction on obedience that was really good. And there some other instructions too that are just too much to write about. But those were kind of the highlights.

After Zone Conference, we went outside to our cars to return to our areas. HOLY SCORPIONS that was hot!!! It was very warm down in St. George when we got there at 7:30. At 3:30, the temperature was insane. Later we checked and found out it was somewhere around 110. And there were no clouds to block the Sun's wrath. I was just outside for 5, maybe 10 minutes, and I literally (and yes I do mean the correct usage of the word literally) felt like I had been outside all day. It's been a while since I've felt that kind of heat. I don't think Blanding or Monument Valley were quite that hot when I was down there last summer! I am quite thankful that I'm serving in Enoch/Cedar City and not St. George right now. Here, it's only been 95 degrees, which still isn't exactly comfortable, but hey, I'll take it. Don't get me wrong, St. George and especially the area surrounding it, is beautiful. But I'm alright not experiencing the Fires of St. George all day, everyday. Especially if I had a biking area and no car (Yikes! I feel sorry for those people). So yeah, you just got to read a random paragraph about the temperature. Totally worth your time right? Haha. And by the way, in case you didn't already guess it, this paragraph is where the title of the email ("The Fires of St. George") came from, and honestly, said title has nothing to do with anything else in this email, but I just called it that because it sounded really intense. Your welcome.

In other, less random news, I just hit my 5 Month mark as a missionary! And my birthday is this week. Haha, now I can say that being a missionary aged me a year!

Well, that's all for now. I hope everybody has a great week! Until next time!

-Elder Oswald

PS- I have a joke (this was actually told to me a couple years ago by

Elder Sean Cornell, currently serving in Boise Idaho).

Q) What do you call Batman when he skips Church? A) Christian Bail!

Haha, hopefully you all enjoyed that. I like it, anyway

With the senior missionary couple Elder and Sister Davila in Enoch