Email veinticuatro: the week of consecration

January 30, 2017  

(This is my email from last week that I wasn't able to finish before 6 pm!)
Howdy y'all ;)  This was a very demanding, but very good week.

On Monday Elder Toomer bought a brand new mountain bike, so we decided to go test it out. We found an old ATV trail by our apartment. I was very quickly reminded of how bad I am at mountain biking. At 6 foot 3 I felt like a praying mantis trying to ride a tricycle. I made it out alive though.
Tuesday we started BIKE WEEK. The day started off well, the weather was absolutely perfect, low 70s, nice breeze, lots of people outside to talk to. A comment on Arkansas weather: many people in Utah complain that the weather is bipolar. Arkansas is sooooooo much worse. One day is in the 30s, the next in the 70s, then there's a torrential downpour the next. Stop complaining people of Utah. Anyway Tuesday we found a couple different Hispanics outside to talk to that told us to come back (just about 98% of the people we talk to tell us to come back "un otro día" which I thought meant another day in Spanish but apparently to the Hispanics here it means “never” (hope you caught the hint of sarcasm there).

At the end of Tuesday we were close by our apartments

because we had a couple of appointments. Everything fell through. We tried a few other Hispanic doors close by, still nothing. 8 o'clock came and we had no clue what to do. So we prayed. We decided to try some apartments down the hill from our apartment. We knocked every door, and got rejected by everyone. It was still 8:15, so we tried a couple other houses, we could hear people inside, but no one answered. So we decided to try this Honduran lady that lives across the street from our apartment. If you want to now what this lady is like, she is a Baptist black lady who speaks Spanish. Her accent is soooooo funny. There are a lot of people with African descent from Honduras. Her 10 chihuahuas went nuts, we woke her up, and she came out looking not very happy. She told us to come back un otro día. We tried some other people, then ended up trying our next door neighbor just for kicks because we were completely out of ideas.
We were super frustrated and ended up going inside the apartment at 8:45 because we had prayed and couldn't think of anything else.

Then we had to confront my worst enemy: nightly planning I prayed for an answer to how we could
improve planning. This story has a happy ending: on Wednesday we as a zone drove down to North Little Rock. And the church leadership council changed the missionary schedule. From now on, we will be doing daily planning in the morning. I wept tears of joy. This was a momentous moment. Prayers are answered.

Saturday we had a devotional with Elder Neal L. Anderson and it changed my mission but I don't have time to write about it. Sunday I decided to fast all day, and break my fast at 9 o'clock. I have never gone that long without food before. I'm amazed that some people suffer going days without food, my heart truly goes out to the hungry and needy. When I broke my fast a ravenous hunger overtook me. I raided the pantry. I ate things I didn't know we had, or how long they had been there. Well I must have done something wrong, because I'm sick today.

Anyways I'm out of time but I love y'all.