Hi everyone!
This week was pretty eventful. First we had interviews with President and Sister Center on Wednesday. It's always fun to talk with them. Unfortunately, this was probably the last interview I get with them. President's three years as Mission President will be done in June. I'm really going to miss him and Sister Center. And it'll be weird having a different Mission President my last 7 months.
After interviews, I had the opportunity to draw up some plans for the area. I presented the idea to Elder Burt and he liked it, so we presented it to our stake correlation meeting. We've started to implement the Enoch West Plan in this area. That's the thing we did in Enoch West with the Ward Mission Leaders, splitting with them three nights a week, and focusing on having the WMLs setting appointments. That worked miracles in Enoch West. The WMLs and the Stake Leadership love the idea, at it will be starting this week. So that's exciting, and I think it'll really get things going here in Snow Canyon. Another thing we'll be doing is in the afternoons (which are usually pretty dang slow), we'll be splitting with the Elders who cover Spanish work in our stake and go tracting with them. That way it could help both companionships, regardless of whether the people speak English or
Spanish, we'll have it covered. So yeah, a lot of good things are about to happen I think, and I'm really finally starting to feel comfortable here. I actually feel like I'm in "my area" now.
Unfortunately, amid all the enthusiasm and exciting developments, I seem to have come down with a pretty bad cold. It started on Thursday, and sort of built throughout the day, and then it hit me full for me Friday morning, and I was sick all Friday and Saturday, and then Sunday I was still sick but began feeling much better as the day progressed. I couldn't do much those days. I got to do some service,
but for the most part, I was stuck inside the whole time. That is torture for a missionary! There were a few times where I almost just decided to go teach anyway, but Elder Burt said I'd probably just get
everyone else sick (and most of the people we've been visiting have small children). Also, I guess I've looked and sounded really sick as well. So yeah, that was pretty much the lamest weekend ever! I guess I had it coming. It'd been several months I think since I'd been really sick. Even when Elder Baker got super sick last transfer, or when the whole Cedar Zone got sick, I dodged it. I guess it's my turn. Thankfully though, I'm feeling pretty much better today. Hopefully now I'll have another several months before I get sick again!
I had a sort of interesting experience this week. In district meeting, as part of a training, we did a Christ-like Attributes assessment. It'd been a while since Id done one of those. The most recent was
probably when I was training Elder Bright, or possibly even when I was being trained. So yeah, it'd been a long time. As I was doing it, I realized how different my answers were now from what they were when I took it last. I've improved on a lot of stuff. And some things are completely different now. For instance, patience. As I was answering the questions about patience, I realized that I've become a pretty patient person. That did NOT describe me before my mission. I had very little patience with people and situations, and was often stressed and short and tempered. Now, I've realized I'm very patient with people and situations. I still have my same personality, and I still can't stand stupidity and stuff (and most politicians), but I don't really stress about it too much or lose my temper about it or anything (minus a couple good healthy rants every once in a while). I haven't lost my temper since before I left on my mission. I've found that I'm much more understanding of people and their weaknesses, and I'm more willing to try and understand them than just judge them. I'm still a pretty black and white thinker, right is right, wrong is wrong, stupid is stupid, and I still do enjoy being right (the "everyone is entitled to their wrong opinion" mentality), but I also better understand that humans, myself included, are multidimensional personalities with backstories and emotions, and that the Savior loves them, and it's just better to be patient with them and love them too, whether it be a companion, an investigator, a member, or that jerk who flipped us off when we were walking down the street. And as much as I love being right, that isn't the most important thing, and sometimes I've just got to shut up and forget it, and REALLY just let it go. I've gotten really good at getting along and negotiating with people. So yeah, I realized I've changed a lot and grown a lot, and learned a lot. I'm definitely still the same person; I wouldn't want to be anything else, but I'm definitely a different version of myself than I was 13 months ago. It's weird, but kinda cool.
Now for something funny from Sunday. It was kind of an off-day for Elder Burt. The first mishap was his lunch. He was going to bake a frozen pizza so he started heating up the oven. Unfortunately, his previous companion apparently used the oven for extra storage and Elder Burt forgot to check. After a few minutes, he opened the oven and found out he was baking a cloth bag full of plastic dishes. Luckily we got that out of there before too much of it melted/caught on fire. It still made a little mess and some bad smelling smoke, so we had to open the door and air out the apartment. Now jump ahead a few hours. We didn't have a dinner appointment, so Elder Burt decided to make himself some pizza rolls. He decided to use the microwave this time. So he put them in, and I wasn't really paying attention. A few minutes later, we heard a small explosion come from the microwave. He
shut it down and opened it up and smoke was coming out. Inside, the plate had broken, and the pizza roles were pretty much charcoal. And we once again had to air out the apartment. We were trying to figure
out what happened, when he mentioned that the directions on the box said to microwave it for 10 minutes. That didn't sound right, so I looked at the box. It did say 10 minutes...for oven directions. For the REAL microwave directions it said 60 seconds. Yep, that did it. He nuked the living daylights out of it, to the point that the plate actually exploded. And that's why you always pay attention to which directions you're using. Haha. It was funny and we had a pretty good laugh about it.
So, on Monday we had a family home evening lesson with our recent convert family (the family we took to the Temple VC) and all their neighbors. We talked about the importance of families, and shared The Family: A Proclamation To The World. I love that document. There are so many things nowadays that it totally warned against, over 20 years ago. And it's pretty much a basic recipe for a happy family, given to us from a prophet. You can't get much more awesome than that. Anyway, the dinner/lesson/activity was really good and really fun, and it's good that Ivan and his family have so much support from their friends. I'll include a picture of that below.
Well that's about it for today. I hope you all have a great week!
-Elder Oswald
No comments:
Post a Comment