Email treinta y cinco: 19 years and counting

 April 10, 2017

Howdy folks!
Thanks to everyone for all the birthday wishes, emails, packages, and letters!  You helped make my first birthday away from home a good one!  A special shoutout goes to my wonderful sister

SHANNON for sending me Dominos pizza!  Another shoutout goes to my wonderful mother for sending a box full of food (very needed) and BYU gear (can never have too much of that either).

So I'll start off by telling about what we did this morning. Brother Bobby Lorimer owns a textbook and apparel store for Arkansas State University, so we stopped and got some free stuff. I walked out with $95 worth of free clothes, mostly because I nabbed a sweet $70 sweatshirt. I love free stuff! Ward members here really love to spoil the missionaries. I can't complain.

Last Monday we had a pretty crazy experience. We were in Walmart towards the end of P-day because we still hadn't gotten shopping done, when an inactive, recent convert came named B came up and talked to us and told us about how she had fallen away from the church and all the struggles she has been going through. She has gone through some pretty heavy stuff in her life.  It was pretty heart breaking to listen to. She started crying in the middle of Walmart while talking to us and said: "Every time I hit rock bottom, you guys (missionaries) just show up. I felt something telling me that I really needed to come up and talk to y'all." We told her to go back to her apartment, wait for us to put our groceries away, and we would be right over to talk to her. We had a really long discussion with her and how we can help her come back to the church and turn her life around and finally find peace again. I thought that she felt the Spirit really strong, she promised she would come to church this Sunday and we set up an appointment to see her Saturday night. To be continued later on in this email.

Tuesday I directed my first District as a District Leader. I talked about the importance of Diligence,

one of the attributes of Christ. In my instruction, I served a paragraph from an email of my buddy Elder Alex Jimenez, who is serving his mission in Argentina right now.

"I had a really simple, but really nice experience this week. We were contacting outside, and I hadn't brought my jacket, cause we left in a hurry (fool), when it started to drizzle. No biggie, we kept contacting. Then, all the sudden, it started pouring! We had nowhere to go, just contacts, and it was pouring! We had been working for hours, and there was a member who lived close, so we decided we were going to go to his house and pass the rain. As we were walking, soaked to the bones, a quiet thought came to my mind that said "Jesucristo would stay out here if he was looking for you" I stopped in my tracks, and in the middle of the pouring rain, I said "Hey, I know this is crazy, but let's just keep contacting. The Savior would do it for us". So we did. We continued contacting in the rain. The people still shut their doors in our faces, but I ended up feeling really good, because I had a chance to show Heavenly Father that I love Him. So that was a really cool experience that I had this week."

The District really liked that story, I also shared portions from President Eyring's Priesthood session address from 2010 October Conference, "Act in All Diligence." I also shared parts of be the Fourth Missionary, and one of my personal favorite quotes: "The only promised result of hard work is joy!" I truly have gained a testimony of that statement. The most miserable times of my mission have been when I was putting in my worst effort, and the best moments of my mission are when I give everything!

The super funny thing about sharing Elder Jimenez's story is a couple days later THE EXACT SAME THING happened to us! We got caught out in the rain while finding, and it was COLD, but we stayed out and kept looking, because Christ would do it for us. Then we FINALLY found a Hispanic. We were about to see the fruits of our diligence! Then she rejected us, and we were back out in the cold rain in short sleeve white shirts. And I loved it! It was so weird. I felt so happy, even though we had made literally no progress, I knew that I had gone out, and put my love for Jesus Christ over my own will, and I couldn't stop smiling!

Right after District meeting I went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders. I went with Elder Croft. Elder Croft is from Pocatello Idaho, and goes home in four weeks, but is doing very well at not be trunky. He is very enthusiastic and quite hyperactive. We had 3 hours of solid finding where we literally talked to everything that moved! People are fun. We got yelled at by the mail man because we tried to give him a card. It was a fun exchange. Teaching only Spanish has been tough, because we are always finding or contacting, because our teaching pool is smaller than our District.

Saturday, my birthday, was a good time. We all actually ended up sleeping through our alarms, and so we woke up at 7:30, late for a service project that started at 7. It was a nice birthday present to get to accidentally sleep in. We threw on jeans and zipped on over to Brother Brent Rougeau's house to help him clear his yard of leaves. Brother Rougeau probably has the thickest southern accent that I ever did hear. He is also the Ward Seminary teacher, so it's a pretty hilarious combination. He is super redneck (self-proclaimed), wears cowboy boots to church and has 5 different tractors in his back yard, and is one of the funniest people I have met on the mission. If he had a daughter my age I'd marry her just to have him as a Father in law! He knows a TON about the scriptures and we had a deep doctrine discussion after we finished the service about the importance of sealings in the temple.

After that, the rest of the day was pretty normal, we got out and did a lot of finding, talked to lots of people, got the same old excuses of being busy. Then at 6 we had dinner at Bishop R's house. At my request we had chicken alfredo, garlic bread, and Oreo ice cream cake. It was glorious. I love the Rich family, they weren't a bad replacement for birthday dinner at home.

Yesterday we had 3 solid lessons at it was fun, I'm out of time, but I love y'all!

The Church is true, the Book is blue, mom just so you know I'm wearing that BYU shirt that I got from you!