Doing what I do best! You didn't tell me you had cool cars!!!!

Howdy, this week was a pretty good one. We had lots of adventures, we moved people, we did lots of yard work, I even worked my engine magic and made an engine start and run. This is a long but well worth a read email. So with out further ado, grab your Pepsi and Popcorn and enjoy another episode of Elder Bennetts Shenanigans.

¾ P-day- Another P-day in the books. We started out by going shopping which is always an adventure. We met an employee who was baptized but lost momentum so hopefully we help him get closer to Christ and God again. We came home and I called the family and we chatted about life and all that good stuff. I then helped Elder Koyle film a video for his home ward. We basically answered questions that the youth had. We then went to a place called Golfland. We went with the whole zone and it was honestly super fun, we played mini golf and lets just say I'm not meant to mini golf. One hole we were playing, I full sent it a little to hard and lost the ball, but don't stress I stole one out of a water feature😜. We also raced go-carts and I'm so light that when I went around one of the corners I was bouncing sideways. We also played laser tag and I did okay but I was just having a blast. We then went thrifting, I bought a 1000 piece John Deere puzzle. We went to the Roseville stake center where the Rockville Zone was hanging out. We lasted about 13 minutes before they kicked our zone out because we weren't invited and we didn't have permission to go there. So Koyle and I along with Elder Wilcox and Elder Kenney came back to the Loomis church building. We played pickleball, and I played the piano for a minute. We then came home and called it a P-day. Back to work we go, we went to our dinner appointment, we had some super good dinner. We had grilled chicken, rolls, and potatoes. For dessert we had ice cream with Balsamic Vinegar on it, it was okay but not the best. We came back and did some facebook work then we whipped out the puzzle. We Did that for a while then went to bed.

⅗- Another missionary day in the books, we started out by hitting the gym. I didn't really do much since I'm not really a gym person. We came back home and got ready for the day. We did our studies, I am doing District Training tomorrow in District Council. So I got some more of that worked on. We had our comp study. I wanted chicken and rice for lunch, so I put rice in the rice cooker, and then we headed out the door. We went and made some awesome contacts. We went to a less active dudes house, he has 3 old fully restored MG cars. So of course we asked to go on a tour of his cars. It was so awesome, I have pictures below so check them out. We then came home and I started to make lunch. So I pulled out the chicken and cut it up into smaller pieces so it would hopefully cook better. Tossed it in the pan and it started cooking, then I realized that this is going to take forever. So I pulled the pieces right back out, cut them up into baby pieces and then tossed them back into the pan. Now it has started to really cook, which is awesome. I seasoned the chicken and I dumped some Teriyaki sauce into it. All was going well till the Teriyaki sauce started to burn in the pan. 😳 I was like oh no 🤦‍♂️ so I poured some water into it hoping to hydrate the chicken and to liquefy the sauce. It kind of worked, so I was like Phew. I pulled out my handy dandy meat thermometer and shoved the probe into the tiny pieces of chicken. I thought my thermometer wasn't working. So I told Elder Koyle that my thermometer was broken. He looked at me and started laughing. He said “Elder Bennett your doing it wrong, you use these when there's big parts of meat, not tiny pieces.” I was like “oh, whoops” so come to find out I really over cooked the chicken, because I was waiting for the thermometer to hit 165°. So I pulled it out of the pan and grabbed the rice, assembled and kind of ate it. It was not the best food I'd ever had. But it was kind of bad. 😢🤣 so I pretty much just had rice for lunch🤣🤣🤣. We then went and made a lot more contacts. We met a Vietnam Vet. We then went to a lesson with a kid named Hunter. I say kid but he's like 22 🤦‍♂️🤣. We taught the importance of Jesus Christ and it went pretty well. We then stopped at a few more peeps' houses, and the church to use the restroom. We then went to another lesson with Brooklynn, she was found through a member and she's hoping to attend BYUI in the spring. She's super awesome and funny. We did the 1st half of the Plan Of Salvation. The lesson went super well and 3 of her best friends were there because they are all in the same ward. We then stayed for dinner, which were street tacos. They were pretty good but the Strawberries they had were the best. We talked about pranks we have done, we also just laughed and chatted it up. It was so much fun. We came home and did some additional study. After 9, we moved the puzzle from our office to the kitchen table. So the puzzle has overtaken our table. We did the puzzle for a while, we got ready for bed and hit the hay.

3/6- Today was DC. We got up and got ready for the day. We had some breakfast which consisted of a nice bowl of cinnamon toast crunch. 😋 We then planned out our day, after planning we did our personal studies. I finished up my training stuff. I also read a couple chapters in the Book Of Mormon. 📖 We then got in the car and drove to Auburn. We got to Auburn early and so Elder Koyle got things ready to go for our meetings. I then went and played the piano so I could get some more practice in. The rest of the zone showed up so we started our meeting. We did roleplays as a zone. We then split up into our districts, and we did our accountability stuff. So we basically talked about our week and things that happened. And then it was my time to shine, it was my turn to do the training. I did it on the importance of Device safety and following rules. It was pretty good, and I way over planned but hey that's okay because we weren't bored ever. We then had lunch and I practiced my song more. I ran through it alot, I even took a break and played the organ for a little bit. I then went and hung out with the other elders in the gym. We were seeing who could make a half court shot with the basketball. It was pretty fun, we kept trying and trying but no success. And then I took the ball and I granny shot that sucker. SWISH the crowd goes wild 🤪. As I was playing and trying it reminded me that in life we struggle to do stuff that's hard. But we just need to stay focused and not give up. It's important to keep trying and trying because in the end it's all worth it. I had my last mentor call with Brother Zito. We talked about member work and it was pretty good. We then came home, and there was so much traffic all the way from Auburn to who knows where, it was definitely past Loomis. We then went Booney tracting with a youth in the ward. His name is Rexton, he's a super cool kid and super funny. We then had our dinner appointment and man this guy has an awesome car shop. He's got so many cool cars and cool things in there. He's living my dream. (Just in California) [pics below]. We then went and visited a member in the ward on the way back and he's also a super cool guy. We talked about their trip to Africa and all that good stuff. We then came home and did our puzzle and went to bed.

3/7- Howdy, another day in the books. We started out with breakfast and that good stuff. Nothing too crazy happened there. We then went street contacting, or tried at least. We ended up tracting a whole neighborhood. It was a really spread out one with like maybe 15 houses on it. We knocked on almost all the houses. And the ones we didn't were either No Soliciting/trespassing or gated. But don't stress because the ones that were gated, the keypad had a call button so we were trying to contact people that way but no one answered the gate call😢. We walked probably like 3 miles round trip, I know that that isn't a lot, but it was more than we planned for. We then stopped by home to grab a drink and use the bathroom. We then went to a lesson, well at least tried to. We showed up to a ladies house named Michelle. We knocked on her door and got no answer so we tried again and still no answer. So unfortunately it was a no go😢. We then came home and had lunch to make our day better, because food makes everything better. Elder Koyle then called his family for his brother's birthday, and I continued to work on the puzzle. We then did some facebook work and went and made some contacts to formers. We had some really good conversations with people. We went to visit a lady who is a former so we parked our car and decided to walk there. So we started walking and we knocked on the house and got no answer. Well across the street was a guy trying to start his riding lawn mower. And well if you know me, you know that I ran lawn mowers and worked on them for a long time. So this was my time to shine, and plus it gave us a reason to talk to this dude. We said “Hey man how are you?” he said “I'm alright, just can't get this thing to start!” so I started going through the basics with him. I said “Well an engine needs 3 things to run- Fuel, Spark, and Compression.” we went through those things and we had all three of those things. But this lawnmower had lots and lots of safety things on it. I mean (Duh it's in California🤣🤣🤣) After some sensor looking and some tries. It appeared to be flooded, I could smell the gas. So I did some more looking and found the Choke Knob and Throttle. So to end this story, with 3 of us. And a “pro” (AKA me) to run the choke and throttle, we got that mower up and running and off he went mowing into the sunset literally. Like he continued to mow his lawn as the sun was setting. We then went to a good Chinese restaurant called Loomis Chinese. Our dinner was canceled, so we needed something 😜. We then came back and did some more work and our Facebook interactions and went to bed.

⅜- Howdy, today was a pretty good day. We started out with breakfast and showers. We then went and did our studies. I am now 84% done with the Book Of Mormon. So we are almost there. We did our companionship study and then we left to the church for Weekly planning. We got to the church and planned out our week. We also dropped (stop teaching) alot of people because they weren't progressing. It was kind of sad to do but it needed to be done. We then came back home and had lunch, I also called my mom since it was her birthday today 🙃. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!!! 🎂 We then went to a service project. We helped out this older couple move some boxes and pack some things up because they are moving to Idaho. It was super fun to meet them and talk to them. We got a tour of their paintings in their house that their son did. We also helped them clean out their food storage and box it up. While we were boxing up their food storage I saw a cool little hat. I put it on and said “what do you think?” the lady said “Elder Bennett, it looks great and sp great you can have it.” So I got a super cool little hat. And a couple books about presidents of the church. We left and went tracting. We talked to some awesome people, but nobody was interested. We then came back to our apartment and did some more Facebook work. We then went to Rocklin to have dinner with a family at a super good BBQ place. 👌 We then had dinner obviously then we went back up to Loomis and had our annual sport night. We played a game called Jungle ball. It was super fun, I was in my boots and people kept asking “How are you so good in those boots?” My answer was simple, PURE LUCK. We then came home and worked on the puzzle and went to bed.

3/9- Today started out as a normal day with normal things. We then went to the members house that we went to yesterday and we continued to help them move. We had lots of fun, we packed up their whole son's closet. He had a lot of stuff from his mission so it was super cool to see what he had. They fed us super good sandwiches for lunch. We then moved a super ton of boxes down stairs for them. Elder Koyle and I connected with them really well, really fast. We then left that service project and went to another service project. We did yard work, and it was super awesome to be doing something I'm pretty good at. The lady's name is Maria and she is from Poland. Her and her husband have been married for a super long time. Like 61 years to be exact, her husband came out and we chatted to him for a while. She also made super good Barley Soup, it was 10/10. So ya we did lots of yard work, and I helped remove a few Rotten stumps, by just kicking them with my boots. She was impressed to say the least. We then came home and changed, then made some contacts with some less active members. We had some dinner which consisted of Elk that we had been cooking for 9 hours. We Shredded it and had it in Quesadillas, it was so amazing. I love Elk meat so much!!! We then went to the bishops house for an Adult ward wide chocolate fountain party. Our bishop has been doing it for like 15 years. It was so much fun to talk to people, and to eat chocolate covered things. Our friend Maria, the service lady, came to the thing so it was good to see her. We then came home and did our nightly routines and went to bed.

3/10- It's Sunday!!!! We woke up an hour late, don't stress because it was daylight savings. So it was 6:30, but yesterday it would have been 5:30 AM. We showered and got ready for church. We went to the church and had our first Missionary Correlation Meeting (MCM), sorry we love abbreviations. We then had the 3rd wards sacrament meeting, and a girl gave her farewell talk today. She's going to VIETNAM for her mission. We then proceeded to go to the young men's quorum. After making a pit stop in the Relief Society room to make an announcement. We then had the 1st wards sacrament meeting. And same thing with class, and making pit stops in the Relief Society. We then had that wards MCM. We came home and had quesadillas with Elk meat. We then went back to the church and went to choir practice. It was pretty good, the songs are pretty good. And hey Ben Di Girolamo- If you're reading this,(I miss singing with you and the choir. Other wards can't do what you can pull off.) We then made some contacts and went tracting, I met a guy who has an excavation company so I got to see his excavators and stuff. I'm definitely going back if I stay another transfer, oh ya transfers are Friday so I'm hoping to stay in Loomis because I love it so much. We then went and had dinner at my favorite Elder Johnsons house with his family. We had Hawaiian Haystacks which were super good and they are my favorite. My mom would make them all the time back home. I played their piano for a while, and we also chatted for a while. We then came home and I got some cleaning done and wrote this about my day and brushed my teeth and went to bed.

Hey look, you made it through. Congratulations!!!! I want to give a quick spirtual thought, one thing I have been thinking about recently is all the amazing friends like you guys, and the things God has put in my life. GOD LOVES ALL OF US SO MUCH. He loves us so much that he sent his son Jesus Christ down to earth to die for us. And because God loves us, he puts things, and people in our life to help us out. Will you look for the things God has done for you this week? I promise that if you do you will be happy. Remember that God loves you, I love you, and to FULL SEND IT.

PICS 📸⏬️

1. Trying to be like this statue

2. Tracting with Rexton

3. Hello there Cow

4. Loomis Zone

5. A cool hat a lady gave me

6. NOM NOM NOM

7. Old Cobra

8. Old woody

9. Old for truck

10. Chocolate fountain

11. Old MG