Smackdown

April 18, 2019

Hi everybody!

I can't believe it's already Monday again! This past week definitely seems to have gone fast. It was definitely crazy. Yeah, yet another crazy week. This time it's bad crazy, but we actually managed to pull off a fairly productive week despite it all.

So, the week started out a little slow, but not too bad. Tuesday was when stupid craziness started. We taught Kyler and Kayton, two Navajo boys who want to get baptized, and actually had a pretty good lesson with them. Then that evening, their grandma and their aunt called us and freaked out on us and told us that we weren't welcome to teach the kids anymore. The aunt seems to pretty much hate us for some reason, and we still don't know why. I guess she was in a lesson with Elder Burt and his previous companion, and I guess that Elder had sort of an off day and the lesson wasn't fantastic. So now she hates us, including me, and I wasn't even there. I guess there was also a misunderstanding that we didn't enjoy teaching the kids because we keep our lessons short with them. That's not the case at all. We enjoy teaching them. It's just that they're 9 and 10 years old, and teaching them for a full 45 minutes to an hour is just going to overwhelm them. Even with adults, we've been advised in this mission to keep lessons shorter rather than longer. Luckily, the kids' uncle called us a little later and basically said we should still come back and that the aunt was just being difficult, so we were able to come back, explain the misunderstanding, and continue teaching. So we dodged a bullet there. We almost lost a couple investigators.

Another dumb thing that happened this week was that a ward mission leader who doesn't like my companion very much decided to randomly complain to our Mission President about an argument that took place between him and Elder Burt 7 weeks ago and was settled about 7 weeks ago. So we had a meeting with him and President Center so we could all work out our differences. It was a good meeting, and President Center handled it really well (President really is just an awesome person), it was just annoying that it had to happen. And I still don't think Elder Burt and this ward mission leader like each other very much.

And there was a bunch more crazy stuff, some of it dealing with some people we're teaching, but I can't really announce what's going on. It's just hard, and that news was a little depressing.

So yeah, it was kind of a smackdown of a week. But somehow, despite all of that, we ended up teaching more than we did the last 2 previous weeks, and we got a new investigator! Hallelujah! We've been in a bit of a dry spell lately, even with doing scheduled splits with the wards, so that's really exciting. This week is kind of a testimony to me that the Lord does His own work, and that he can get us through hard times. Looking back on the week, it was really pretty crummy. Yet we still found success. We almost lost two investigators, but we didn't, and we found a new one. We were able to keep ourselves fairly busy. There was stress and annoyances, but we didn't cave. There was

even potentially devastating news from some people we're teaching, but the Bishop is working to help that, and after talking to them yesterday, they're doing ok, and the work goes on. In the scriptures, the Lord teaches that sometimes He gives us trials so we can recognize His hand in helping us out of them. I've definitely seen that this past week. It's been a learning experience for sure.

Well, for some more exciting news, we do have some baptisms coming up! Unfortunately, none for April, but probably 3 in May. There's a lady named Lexie, whose husband is a member, who's getting baptized on the 14th of May. Also, those two Navajo kids, Kyler and Kayton, will probably be getting baptized near the end of May. So definitely some things to be excited about and to work towards.

Well that's all for today. I miss you all! Have a great week!