Week 45: With My People

This week has been quite the change for me and it's been a ton of fun! As much as I loved my time in Cotulla, this area is so much more exciting haha. We have tons of activities and stuff just about every day and it's super cool to interact with people that are nearer to my age! We get fed a surprising amount for having a ward full of college students, but we're super grateful for it. Most of them are recently returned missionaries themselves so it's super fun being around them. I love it here so far! We cover basically the whole mission except for the more rural areas, so we can pretty much go anywhere we want (provided we have the miles to go...which usually isn't the case ha).

On my first day we helped a member named Mitch move some stuff in his new apartment. He's super awesome and nice and apparently had an epic Star Wars art collection in his old house. I hope I get to see some of it in person. Afterwards he took is to dinner which was super sweet. That was when i also met the sisters. At this point we only had one set because they are both training new missionaries and they didn't get here till Saturday. So our district was super super small for a few days! 

Wednesday morning was pretty fun since we got to go do service at the Food Bank doing distribution. What made that extra fun was that an Elder from my last district (Elder Deming) goes there every Wednesday as well so I'll get to see him around still! He's a good missionary. 

We had an interesting lesson with our friend Timothy that day going over the family proclamation. He's one of those sort of slow burn people that needs a bit of time to progress. He has a desire to be baptized but he's got a couple road blocks that he is working on. He's a good guy. A bit goofy, but he's cool haha. We got to go to institute that night as well which was really fun! I got to meet a bunch of the YSA members there and we got cake. An absolute win. 

On Thursday we finally got to do campus finding! One of the perks of serving in the YSA is getting to go on campus and find allll the people. We usually set up a table with some pamphlets and scriptures, set up a poster with Christ on it, and we'll usually have a whiteboard with some kind of Christ-centered question on it for people to put their answers on. Sometimes people walk up to ask us who/what we are, but most of the time we start conversations by offering people one of the Jesus pictures we hand out. It's definitely better than tracting, that's for sure!

That night we had probably the funnest member meal I've ever had haha. The people were just super fun and talkative and the sisters shared a great message afterward. I'll attach the video as part of my spiritual thought because it's great. Yes, it's a kids video but it's sweet.  

Friday we had mega distribution with the Food Bank where we handed out food from 7:30 to 11. That was super fun but super long haha. I think we served around 1200 families that morning! 

There is a super cool service missionary in the mission named Elder Pieroni and every so often we spend part of the day with him and he drives around with us doing stop-bys and lessons etc. which is suuuuper nice because that saves us miles. He's a fantastic missionary and we love him so much. He joined us for a lesson with a new member named Ben and we talked about the temple and the priesthood with him while we walked around the neighborhood. Really looking forward to seeing Ben take that next step along the covenant path. 

Saturday morning was super fun! I played ultimate Frisbee for the first time and it was so much fun. I really suck at throwing a Frisbee under pressure, but hopefully I'll improve as I play more, especially since we play every Saturday. If I don't get better...uh well that will be unfortunate.

 

We drove with a member for half an hour after Frisbee to help someone move in but...they were finished when we got there. We did get to know the new member of the YSA though and she came to church the next day! Good stuff. 

That morning the new sisters entered the field so we all went to lunch at Chick-fil-A. A bit more expensive than I remembered it being, but it was good. As a bonus, I got to see a member from Castle Hills there!

Church was super sweet. Nothing super special in particular but it felt soooo good to be back in a proper ward after so long! I'm really loving getting to know the members and building friendships with them. This area is pretty different but it's super sweet.  

Today we went to the Japanese Tea Gardens here and now we're walking around the Mercado with the district. We ran into a bunch of member ladies from Utah a few minutes ago and they're being absolute legends and buying us some pastries at the bakery! People are so cool. So far it's been a super fun day!

I love you all! Have a fantastic week and I'll catch you next week. God bless!

Love,

Elder DeWitt