Week 19: Dailight Savings and other Shenanigans

March 13, 2023

Week 19: Dailight Savings and other Shenanigans

Hey ya'll! Its been another one of those really fast and slow weeks again. It never makes sense. Maybe I'll figure out how that works someday...

Overall things have been going pretty well, I'm alive and I'm happy! (what more could I ask for?! Ok, well maybe another hour of sleep) The weather is starting to heat up but it's projected to cool off again for some reason. The weather in Texas is...something special! One day it's 50° then the next it's 90°. It just can't decide what it wants to be.

We kicked off the week with our transfer-ly interviews with our mission president which is literally such a delight. President Fitzgerald is one of the greatest men I've met. You wouldn't think that an interview would be enjoyable, but it's just great to talk to him! The rest of the day was pretty mediocre, but it sure set the day off well.

Good things come in threes! We had three lessons the next day which, if you know how missionary life is, makes the day so much better! The first one was on the fly to a man we met who has a terminal disease that is killing his kidneys and basically destroying his body. Sorta dark, but he was definitely interested in the afterlife! He was very nice and was interested in meeting again. We thought he was about to throw up at one point, but apparently his lungs just sorta...stopped working for a second. Yeah that was a bit terrifying but he was ok. Well, as ok as he could be in his condition.

We had another lesson with our friend Jesus (that will never not be funny to say) and it went well, but he isn't quite ready to make commitments unfortunately. He loves meeting with us though.

Our last lesson was with our friend Danny who has been in THREE car accidents in the last two months. This poor man! He's been put through the ringer lately. He and the member we brought to the lesson connected really well though...about back pain and getting older. It went well all together still.

So we now have a restroom sign.

Elder Reynolds and I were joining the Spanish sisters in a lesson, and while we were waiting for their friend to show up we saw a door in the dumpster. With a restroom sign on it. The rest is history. I believe that part of being a missionary (specifically an elder) is collecting weird random things for the apartment. It just sort of happens. Don't worry, I don't think anything could survive the sanitizing that thing went through when I was done with it. It is VERY clean. The sign now hangs in a place of honor on the door of our "REST"room (a.k.a. our bedroom). We find joy in the little things haha

A member from the ward took us to lunch on Saturday to a place called Cece's. Cece's is a pizza, salad, and pasta buffet and it's really not bad. They have copious amounts of all kinds of very interesting (and also some normal) kinds of pizza. The quality was pretty low, but hey, if you really want to grub for $8 this is the place! Really wasn't as bad as we had originally expected to be honest.

Alright. Daylight savings. Not a fan. Arizona does it right! Waking up Sunday morning an hour early was not an enjoyable experience at all. My watch is absolutely SPOT ON now though because of it, so I guess something good did come from it. Daylight savings just doesn't make a whole lot of sense nowadays in my opinion. We also get an extra hour of proselyting time...except it's dinner time and everyone gets mad at us when we knock on their door. Oh well, the work moves forward!

Sunday was sweet! We had our friend Joseph come to church having only met him in person once. Joseph is really funny and really interested in the church. He is from the Holy land (born in Bethlehem and lived in Jerusalem). He speaks good English with a pretty heavy almost Russian sounding accent, but he just doesn't understand some American phrases or pronunciation. We Americans like to shorten words! He seems to like church a lot so far.

Another great thing about Sunday was we had a baptism! The sisters have been teaching a man named Robert and he finally got baptized after getting married a couple weeks back! It was a great service, and our friend Derek was able to watch over Zoom too. Baptisms are just the best.

(I also made the mistake of accidentally singing too well while sitting behind the ward music coordinator, so now I'm doing a musical number in church in a couple of weeks...yaaaay)

Oh hey look, it's Monday! Not much has happened so far today, so there isn't much to tell. Basically just going to be the usual p-day things like shopping and calling home.

Alrighty here's a thought I had recently. So at a zone conference we had a lesson about big rocks. Yup. (Let me explain) Many of you have most likely heard this analogy before but here's a simple rundown:

There's a bowl. This bowl is your life. You are given a pile of about fist sized rocks and another bowl of sand. The rocks represent important thing and the sand represents "fillers" or "fun" things. You are asked to fit all of it inside the bowl without going above the top of the edge. If you pour all the sand into your "life bowl" and then try to stack all your big rocks in...it won't all fit. However, if you put in the big rocks first THEN the sand, the sand fills in the cracks and it all fits perfectly. Moral of the story, do the most important things first, and the rest will fit into place.

One of those big rocks is the gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact, it should be one of the biggest and first rocks we put in. We are promised that if we "...seek...first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, [then] all these things shall be added unto you" (3 Nephi 13:33). Especially, if we put God first, the sand and other rocks will fit into place. I know that to be true.

Welp, that's about all I got for this week folks! Hopefully it wasn't too long. I've started working on these emails the night before so I'm not as rushed, but it also results in a more drawn out email. Hopefully it's not too horrible to read. I trimmed off some of the fat in this email, so hopefully it's fairly lean. Well, I love and appreciate all of you and hope yall have a great week!