7/10/17...Hola! Banos Nachos!

Where to begin. This week is a blur already but it was great as far as I can recall. 

Last Monday we didn't do anything too exciting, went and did some chores and stuff in the apartment and cleaned the car. Then we just played some basketball at the church with the assistants. It was really fun. It's pretty sweet, Tuesday's Thursday and Saturdays, us and the other companionships by us go play basketball or football in the mornings here. It's a lot of fun. There's an elder named Elder Brown that's going to play for Big Bend CC in Washington for basketball. He'll probably play Gabe one day. 

Tuesday the 4th! I love America! Seriously what a great place to live.  How blessed are we?! Elder Carroll and I downloaded a bunch of talks on the constitution or any America talk and listened to them all day. There are some really good ones. President Benson has a lot on the constitution.  He declares it as a sacred document. Then he says "when the Lord comes the stars and stripes will be floating in the breeze over this people." Pretty sweet. Such a great place to live, and if we serve God and live righteously we will be a free people. Ether 2:12. It was so great knocking on some doors talking to people on the 4th. We found some great people. We found this guy named Monty. We got talking to him about the restoration and we ran out of all our copies of the Book of Mormon. So we told him we could give him one next time we come. Well looking in his house he just had hundreds of books everywhere and I really felt that he would already have one. So we asked him and he totally had one but had never read it or anything. He works a ton so it will be hard for us to teach him regularly but hopefully we can get back in contact with him really soon. That night we had a great dinner with Brother Warner. He cooked a ton of meats for us, smoked some stuff overnight that was really good. Then we lit some sparklers....ya crazy I know. Not quite the fireworks we would get from the Indian reservation but we made it fun. We were able to watch some good fireworks from the apartment when we got in which was nice. 

We had a conference at the mission office Wednesday which was really great! There were some really good trainings given. We talked about really having a sense of urgency for the work and having a desire to hasten the work.

We were kind of bummed we weren't able to teach Poly or Beryl this week because of some things that came up in their schedules. And they didn't come to church. So Poly is going to have to be moved back at least a week for her baptism. And Beryl should still be able to make it for the 29th. She is going to quit smoking this week as well! 

I am starting to get adapted to the new area and ward which is good, I'm not very good at adjusting quickly to the change. I need to get the area down as quick as I can because Elder Carroll will have been here 7.5 months after this transfer. 

One day this week we were doing some finding and we were just striking out like crazy, getting rejected a lot and we had no idea what was going on. So we decided to stay in the area where we planned to be and keep finding. We talked to a lady named Monyia who was super receptive and possibly elect. We put her on date right there at her door and she seemed excited.  We haven't been able to have to good of contact with her, but we are still hopeful we can teach her. We are really working to find solid investigators that can progress. But you gotta separate the wheat from the tares and that takes time and effort and a lot of faith with prayer. I know that this is the Lord's work, the Lord will grant us our righteous desires. I know that the Lord will provide solid people for us to teach and progress towards baptism. I love this work. I know it truly is the Lord's. 

There is so much I've learned about the gospel and I have learned how big of a role missionary work is. Elder Bruce R. McConkie said that baptism is the path to purity and perfection. My role it to invite people to make steps towards perfection that they can be made clean through the blood of the Lamb. I love this gospel I know it's true. And I love me familia! 

LOVE Y'ALL! 

glad you got to experience some southern weather, Cookout and hospitality!