New People and Super Fat Dogs

What is up y'all? This week was a crazy week full of miracles and new people. We finally got out of quarantine and went at missionary work full speed. I learned so much while being quarantined. I feel like an actual prepared missionary now. This email is another long one but it's great.

1/1 Monday, for the first day of 2024 was a super good day. Today was our last day of quarantine, thank goodness. I started out the morning with writing my magnificent last email, which if you haven't read yet, I recommend you read it before this one. Just come back after.🤣 After sending the email, I made some amazing breakfast burritos for elder koyle and I. After breakfast I started doing my laundry, while the laundry went round and round, I called the family, and talked to them for like 1.5 hours. After my family call, elder koyle and I went to the park and played basketball. Don't stress there was nobody there, and plus it was outside so it's fine. After the park and playing basketball, we came back and did more laundry. Now for the funnest part of the day, FISHING 🎣 😀. The members we live with have a full on pond that has fish in it!!! We fished for a while and didn't catch anything, the only thing I caught was the tree branch over head🤣. (We were just trying to take the mission saying “lines in the water” seriously.) We then came back and made super yummy nachos. We then did personal study, and played cards. Then sadly our p-day ended, so it was back to facebook work. I added a lot of people, and tried to talk to some, but nobody wanted to talk😥. We then did our night routine and went to bed. That's its for today just fishing and facebook work.

½ Tuesday-Our first day out of quarantine, thank goodness. We started off the day by going to the store and getting things we needed. Because we need food,and without food, we become hungry. We went today because we were still in quarantine yesterday. But don't stress. Because like i said earlier we are out of quarantine now🤙. We then did our studies and our daily planning. We then did our daily contacts and talked to a few people. Then it was off to go find people, we went back to Taylor rd. And it was empty so we went to the Penryn library, and it was closed. So our street contacting plans went down the drain, but we tried our hardest. We headed back home and made plans to rake leaves in peoples yards for a service project. Then the lovely small water droplets/rain came upon us and that plan went down the drain. Then it was off to a member's house in the 1st ward for dinner. (I never thought I would say this, but I missed going to members' houses for dinners) We then taught them a short lesson about focusing more on important gospel things like scriptures, family, and temples. We then went to the church and practiced a song for social media and then came back and did some facebook work. That's it for today really, just tried to stay busy. Kinda rough on productivity, but don't stress because tomorrow is gonna be a party.

⅓ Wednesday, Today was a pretty good day, we were also pretty busy. We started out the day with our personal studies. We then went to Lincoln for our district council. After the important things were done at the district council, we played a really fun game called “smurf”. It was so much fun. We then came back and went to the church and did some facebook work, and practiced some songs/musical talents of ours. We then went and talked to some non active people in one of our wards. We even got a new person, his name is Jeff. He is a retired fireman, He's a super cool dude, and we have an appointment on the 10th. So, hopefully, things work out for us. We then went to mutual in another ward. And they just went over the sacrament stuff for the new people. We then came back and did our additional studies, and then I wrote this lovely email/Journal entry. That's it, just a new guy and staying busy.

¼ Today was an interesting day. It reminded me of something being held together with zip-ties, like zip-tieing something that shouldn't be zip-tied. It should have fallen apart but it didn't luckily. Pls read to understand what I mean. We started off by going to the gym and tried to start the “Lawnmower” if you don't understand, please refer to the previous email and day 12/27. After unfortunately not succeeding, we headed home and got ready for the day. We then reminded ourselves that we had a lesson at 9, we remembered at 8:30 and the church is like 15 minutes away. Well we made it, but she was still asleep, so we spent that blocked time practicing songs. We then went back home and did our studies which is always super great. We then went leaf tracting, your probably asking yourself “what's that?”. Well let me explain, we posted an “ad” on facebook offering leaf raking. A lady reached out and said she would like it, so we had to find rakes. The hardest part about that was having people answer the phone. But we managed to find some rakes. We went and did the service project, it was super small and easy. (Sorry mom or you guys, I did not get a picture😥). We then went home and had our lunch break and took a little eye resting session, aka a nap🤣. We then went tracting and we talked to some less active members. In the process of trying to find a certain person, we had an interaction with the 2 FATTEST BULLDOGS I have ever seen. They were pretty nice, one was super barky? Is barky a word? I hope so🤣. Well long story short we never found the person or her house for that matter. We did come in contact with a lady who had some super hard questions for us. But after that we had no luck with the other people we were trying to contact. We went to a lesson with a lady, and she was pretty cool and her husband was super funny 😁. After we went to the church again and practiced some more songs for posting on facebook.

⅕- Today was an amazing day. We started out by going to the gym. I didn't work out a whole lot, because I just wasn't feeling it. We then came home and did our daily planning and then we had our personal studies. While I was studying, I was trying to find something I could share with a lady we were going to start teaching. Don't stress, I found Alma 32 which is always a great one to share. We then went tracting, we knocked on some doors and actually talked to quite a few people. One dude was super republican and I was like heck ya buddy. We then grabbed lunch and took our lunch break. After our lovely lunch break/nap time we started to get things for our sports night. We were playing flag football, and of course it was going to be dark so we needed lights and a power source. Well our lovely upstairs neighbors had everything we needed. We then went and played the piano and i'm learning “I am a child of God” right now. While I was doing that, Elder koyle was struck by my lovely music that he fell asleep. (Look at pics😉). Afterwards we did our 2 hour weekly planning. We set some amazing goals, and this upcoming week is going to be an amazing week. We then didnour device Audits. That basically means my companion and I change phones and we go through each other's phones. We just make sure we are both following the rules. The first time I did it, I was like this is super weird, but now I'm used to it. After our device audits, we had a lesson with the lady who canceled on us. We talked for a while and it was a solid lesson. We then hurried and ran home, changed, loaded up the stuff for flag football and left again in like a 5 minute time frame. We then went to the park, and set everything up. The other elders brought the glow sticks for the football and th flags to play with. Elder Collyer and I spent like 15 minutes duct taping glow sticks to a football. It was pretty legit, until kickoff when the glow sticks and duct tape went flying in the opposite direction of the actual football. So it didn't really work, but hey the idea was super cool. We played for a while, then everyone got cold, but us elders were like this is warm. Considering we are either from Utah or Idaho where it's cold there right now. Anyway, we loaded our stuff up and went home. we did our nightly calls and hit the hay, because we were super tired. That's its for today, just being super busy. I also played flag football on grass that in an hour it would go from dry to frosted over. Meaning the humidity is so high that when it's below 50 degrees, it turns into frost. Kinda cool fun fact. 

⅙ Today was a pretty good day. We started out with the gym, we really didn't have much time to workout. We then came home and did our studies. After our studies, we went tracting in the rain. We didn't get a big interest but that's okay. I was trying to stop cars as they drove past, I was holding the book of mormon with the biggest smile ever. Ya nobody stopped but hey it was worth a shot. We then went to Lincoln for a baptism, it was a kid in one of our wards who invited us. After the baptism we went and tried to contact some non-active members. The first guy was named Kyle, he lived out in the middle of nowhere. He was the coolest guy ever, he has so much property. We talked for like an hour, we learned he rodeoed in the NFR for a few years. He is now a Sicc nurse, something that has to do with an IV that goes to your heart? Idk. Anyway, he's from Delta Utah. Which is super cool, because I have family down in that area. He invited us to dinner sometime. I decided I want to live where he lives, middle of nowhere with lots of land and a massive shop. He has all that fun stuff. I decided I wanna be like him, but active in the church and not a doctor and definitely not from Delta🤣🤣🤣. We then did a couple other houses. But no answer from any of them, we then we had our daily music practice. Then we had dinner, I think I had nachos and a jam sandwich?🤣. We did our nightly routine and went to bed.

1/7 Today is Sunday!!! We started out by getting ready for church then we had our first missionary correlation meeting (MCM) at 8:15. We then went to sacrament and the testimonies were great. A lot of them were from people who were converted to the church. We then went to their Sunday school and talked about the Book of Mormon. After we walked into the end of the other wards sacrament and enjoyed their testimonies. We then went to there sunday school and did the same lesson for the 2nd time. After we did our other wards MCM, and we just talked about the people we are working with right now. We then came home, and planned our day. We then did our personal study, and I fell asleep listening to a talk from general conference🤣. Elder koyle then ate lunch and ended his fast. We went and talked to some in-active people and some formers. We met a guy named José, he has my dream truck (1978 Ford f250). We talked to him and he is now a new person. We then went and had dinner at our ward mission leaders house. It was super good beef that was so tender. We then went to the church and talked to a kid named Élder Jensen. (He lives above us) he just got set apart as a missionary and is going to Guatemala. We played some hymns, and kinda hung out. We then came home and called it a day. It wasn't too bad of a day honestly. Kinda relaxing with lots of easy work to do. 

     This week was awesome, like I said earlier. I had a lot of cool things happen and alot of other miracles, that I didn't share but that's okay. Before I leave I want to leave you with my testimony about service. Your probably thinking "Why service? What does that have to do with missionary work?" Well my dear listeners, a big part of missionary work is service. Yes we knock doors and teach people, but that's not all we do. We serve people alot, just like Jesus did. Anyone can do service, it can be something small. For example paying for someone's drink at the gas station, or even opening the door for someone. Service doesn't have to be big. When I was back home and if it snowed I would do my daily snow routes for my business, then I would go drive around and find driveways to clear. Yes I know that is probably extreme, but you never know what that person is going through. I promise you that if you try to serve others and think outwards. You will recieve blessings. I challenge you to serve at least 1 person this week. I would love to hear from you on how that goes. In the name of Jesus Christ amen. 

     That's it for this week, don't forget that god loves you and knows each of you personally. He is always there to listen, you just have to pray to him. I love all of you and can't wait to hear how your service goes.

Pics⏬️⏬️⏬️-not sure how to get pics to line up with descriptions, so bear with me.

Glowsticks+Football 

Teeth scrubbing selfie 🤳 

Élder Jensen 

Tracting in the cold rain

My study setup

Elder koyle and I jamming out

Pretty sunset

Elder Koyle asleep

Organ playing