The Best Two Years: Transfer Week Shenanigans

April 11, 2016

Hi everybody!

Well this week has been crazy! It's actually been pretty good, but holy cow! I'm kinda glad it's over.

So the week began on a crazy note. P-Day was pretty ordinary, but it was also transfer week. My apartment has a lot of extra beds, so when missionaries who are going home coalesce in St. George the day before their exit interviews, special temple trip, dinner with the Mission President, and what not, they stay in my apartment. Also, when Elders are going to train new missionaries, they usually end up staying in St. George for a couple days for all the trainer/greenie meetings, and so they also stay at this apartment. So back to Monday, a former companion of mine, Elder Spencer, went home this past week, so he stayed the night with us on Monday night. Then Tuesday evening we got two Elders who were going to be training, who were going to be staying with us until Thursday morning. One of them was Elder Bright, another former companion of mine, actually the one I trained. And then on Wednesday, both of their greenies also stayed with us. So there were 6 Elders in one apartment. Wow. I now know why President insists on one companionship per apartment. It was a blast, but for those days, our apartment basically turned into a "celestial frat house". Now don't get me wrong, we didn't break any rules. None of them actually (except going to sleep on time). Mostly we just played board games, cracked jokes, and stayed up late quoting basically the entire Napoleon

Dynamite movie. And the apartment was kinda trashed. We also brought all 6 of us to our stake missionary correlation meeting and tried to convince everyone that we were now a companionship of six (and one guy was buying it!). So yeah, we were obedient, but had a lot of fun with the situation. But obedient or not, an apartment full of goofy 18-20 year olds is still an apartment full of goofy 18-20 year olds. It was exhausting! Elder Burt is very extroverted, and even he was wiped out by the end of it. So yeah, we were the missionary hotel for a couple days.

Kind of going along the lines of the last paragraph, I'm super excited that Elder Bright is training! Missionaries (at least in this mission, but I'm pretty sure it is super widespread) have a silly bit of lingo we use when it comes to entering the mission, training, going home, etc. when you enter the mission, you are "born". Your trainer (first companion) is your "dad" (or "mom" if you are a sister missionary). When you train a new missionary, he is your "son". If you were going to train, but the new missionary goes home right before leaving the MTC, that's a miscarriage. When you go home after your mission is completed or for honorable reasons, you "die". If a missionary is "dying" and you are his last companion, it is said that you "killed" him. If you do something stupid to get yourself sent home dishonorably, we call that "suicide". Alright, now back to Elder Bright. I trained him, so Elder Bright is my "son". Now he's training, so now he has a "son", and I now have a "grandson". So that's pretty exciting, and it was pretty cool because they were staying with us for a couple days. So there were three "generations" of Elder Falconbury's (my trainer's) descendants under one roof. And guess what! Elder Bright's greenie is from Michigan! Like "grandfather" like "grandson" I guess. I thought that was awesome, and Elder Bright thought it was pretty funny that he was trained by a Michigander and now he's training a Michigander. He said "I'm surrounded by you guys!" Well anyway, that was fun. And there you have all of our weird lingo.

Congrats if you're still reading this! I feel like someone might be reading the last paragraph going "Wow. Missionaries are weirdos. This newsletter is going nowhere." So give yourself a pat on the back if you're still toughing through it. Well in terms of actual missionary work, we did moderately better than last week. The trouble is, we couldn't do that much when there were six of us, and we kept having to transport luggage and run emergency errands, and transport all six of us around. So after everything settled down was when we were really able to get to work. And we still pulled off more lessons than the week before, despite not being able to do much Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. So the work is definitely going, it was just a ridiculous week. This week ought to be pretty decent, and we're looking at picking up at least one new investigator this week.

We did some pretty cool service on Saturday morning. It was for all the missionaries in St. George. We drove out to some hilly wilderness canyon-ish area mildly close to the St. George Airport and picked up garbage for a few hours. Ok, that sounds really boring, but I actually enjoyed it. For one, I love being out in nature, and it was a rather nice location I thought. It wasn't incredibly pretty per se, but it was cool in its own bleak desert-y sort of way. It was also raining all day Saturday. But it wasn't cold rain, so it actually felt nice, and I found the rain and clouds, plus the valley's secluded location

away from the city rather relaxing. I needed that after the craziness of just a couple days earlier.

I've been thinking a lot about General Conference, this was one of my favorite quotes, from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles:

"My brothers and sisters, the first great commandment of all eternity is to love God with all of our heart, might, mind, and strength--that’s the first great commandment. But the first great truth of all eternity is that God loves us with all of His heart, might, mind, and strength. That love is the foundation stone of eternity, and it should be the foundation stone of our daily life."

I really like that, and I want to strive to better live that. That God loves us is something I teach on a regular basis, but sometimes I feel like I just take those words for granted. How much better would things be if we could all really internalize that doctrine and live by it, if we all made that the "foundation stone of our daily [lives]"? I've been doing a lot of self assessment, and though I've come a very long way since coming on my mission, I've still got a way to go. I'm just really glad Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are patient and supporting.

Well, I think that about covers everything that's happened over the last week. Until next time! Have a good one!

-Elder Oswald

PS-There was a baptism in Enoch West on Saturday of an awesome family that I've had the privilege to teach for a few months. The dad (Justin) was baptized several weeks ago, and now he has the Priesthood and was able to baptize the kids: Mckayla, Tristin, Justin Jr., and Kendra. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend the baptism since I'm in St. George, but just like at Justin's baptism, I had Elder Bright hold up a picture of me so I could kind of be in the baptism picture.

Back (from left to right): Elder Baker, Justin (dad), Brytani (mom), Elder Bright (holding a picture of me)

Front: Elder Char, Mckayla, Justin Jr., Kendra, Tristin