Week 65: Pretty Normal...ish

Hey y'all!

The majority of this week was, as the title suggests, pretty normal. Missionary work can be weird like that. A lot of days feel super similar, but there's always something super random thrown into the mix that keeps things interesting ha. And the "random" stuff usually isn't very random. God is really in the details of everything and there are truly miracles all around (if you look :) 

I'm going to do a day-by-day for this email. I usually don't, but there was some fun stuff this week and I don't know how to incorporate it all otherwise! I realized I usually keep these pretty short and simple (especially when I'm short on time) but I thought it might be fun to include some more details this week. Yes. It's long. Bear with me.

Monday (last week)

I already kinda covered this before, but we got a call from the assistants to the mission president (who are in our district) and offered to come pick us up and take us around some of the catholic missions here in San Antonio! This was a little blessing since we were planning on having a really boring p-day since we had VERY few miles left in the month, so we weren't planning on doing anything. Visiting the missions was really fun though and it was fascinating getting to see the history of these places. 

We also had some member lessons that evening. We set up a lot of appointments with members of our wards to share messages with them. #1 greatest resource for missionary work in an area like this: members!

Tuesday

We got to serve with a smaller food distribution organization called West Avenue Compassion (or WAC, for short) which was super fun! The other volunteers are mostly just older folks, and it's seriously the most wholesome thing in the world getting to work with them. They're way nice. Also, the smaller scale operation was a lot more personal. It's really fun!

We're working with a returning member named Marvyn and we went over the CFM for the week with him. It was a good discussion, even though we spent a good chunk of time in the beginning talking about his growing Funko Pop collection. He's a good kid. 

Wednesday 

Oh boy this was a day. We were sitting down to plan out our day in the morning and we look and see "Interviews with Mission President". At what time, you ask? 5 minutes ago. Yeah...we live on the 4th floor of our apartment and I almost ate it trying to go down the stairs too fast. Fortunately  the church is pretty close by, but we still felt so bad for being late. President runs on a pretty tight schedule with interviews and totally threw things off for that day.

That night we ended up having one of the most interesting member meals. And not the good kind of interesting. Like...the uncomfortable kind. If you've had to eat some kind of mystery casserole and odd white asparagus in silence while a older couple who are both hard of hearing argues for over an hour about church history, you know what I mean. 

Thursday

Guess what we did! More knocking and stop-bys...

It was good though! We were able to set up a handful of lessons, had a couple good conversations with people at the door, and had the entirety of the real estate world explained to us by a member. Sometimes you just ask the wrong (or right?) questions and then suddenly 45 minutes have gone by and you have to cut off the honestly pretty interesting conversation in a awkward way because you reaaaally need to leave. But hey! I did learn a thing or two from it. 

Fun little miracle - The same night we stopped by another member who invited us in for some home-made bread. I had been thinking the day before about my mom's bread and how I haven't had it for over a year, and it made me a little sad actually. That night was a nice tender mercy because I swear that bread tasted EXACTLY like my mom's! It really made my day. They also invited us over for dinner the next day which was super nice.

Friday was relatively uneventful except for two things. 1. One of our friends told us he's was going to be at church! And 2. A member in the area has a Ram 1500 TRX and he said he would take us on a ride sometime!!! I'm seriously so excited, you don't even know.

Saturday

I got to conduct one of the best baptismal interviews! It's really fun getting to do them when they're REALLY prepared. This lady was really cool. She has 18 horses and a super strong testimony of the restored gospel! No, those are not relevant to each other, but the horses part is just really cool...

SUNDAY!

This was one of the most wild Sundays I've had on the mission. For one, we attended three fast and testimony meetings. Those are always a mixed bag in a family ward, but it was awesome! We didn't have any OVERLY weird testimonies and we only had one that wasn't about Jesus! (An old guy just rambled about Brigham Young for a few minutes. I was lost.) 

The OTHER awesome part was we had a friend come to church!! His name is Trevor and he's fairly close to our age. Yes, that does mean that we might have to pass him off to the YSA, but this was a huge step! He's been kind of flakey recently, but he showed up and really liked church. I was worried about the testimony meeting with him there at first, but it was super good. We had a lesson with him later that day and he asked so many good questions. Just a solid gospel centered conversation. 

We also had two dinners that night. The first was pretty early but the other one was just an hour later, so we kind of struggled to finish. At the second one we did learn ALL about the cycling world, so that was fun! There's a lot more to it than one would expect...

In the evening we had a couple member lessons that went well, and I got my finger smashed with a can of beans! (It's an object lesson and I don't feel like explaining. Ask me later.)

Overall it was a crazy busy Sunday, but it was really good! It was one of the few times that I've been able to leave the apartment at 8:30 and not come back until slightly past 9. It's was a busy, but really fulfilling day. 

Ok, this has been a chunker of an email, so I'll wrap up. We're focusing on miracles together as a mission and working on showing the faith to receive them. I hope you all are able to do the same. Look for the good in your day, and you will find it. Look for God in your life, and you WILL find Him. The same goes for the opposite. Focus on the good in your life and your circumstances will follow suit. To quote President Nelson, "the joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives."

This is true! I really have nothing to add.

I love you all and I hope this week goes amazing. Sorry if this email was a little lengthier. I'll probably throw one of these in here and there just so y'all know I'm actually doing things out here.

God bless, y'all!

Love,

Elder DeWitt

I really wanted to ask this guy for a ride. This thing was so cool! You could smell the exhaust from a mile away haha

The library computers. They're Macs. Running Windows? 

A sign on a member's door.

A sweet older sister in the ward baked us muffins. They were so good...