This is pretty intense. This is the first time I've ever written an email home as a twenty year old. I can't believe I'm so old now. I'm practically older than the Chief. Pretty crazy to think about.Thanks to everyone for birthday awesomeness! The "seek and find" has kept me very busy, the cds kept me happy, the candy made me fat and unhealthily awesome, and the plastic ping pong shooting gun kept me in charge. Also for the blog I've been requested to give a shoutout to Kara Roney. She sent me a package and it even had poprocks and bubbletape, so it was definitely worth some recognition. In the past week I've been given five cakes from member families (candles and a "Happy Birthday" song every time), three of which were ice cream cakes and my zone threw me a surprise birthday party where they gave me a set of AWESOME superman sheets and some other nifty things. My bed is the coolest one in the mission (just so the mom knows, the pillowcase she made for me is still the one that I use along with the quilt she made me). The sisters made me a delicious cookie/ice cream cake with all twenty candles that I was able to blow out first try. I wished for world peace, so I'd like to tell everyone you're welcome in advance. Anyway, it was an excellent birthday week so thanks to all who contributed or are still going to contribute. It's never too late to celebrate my birthday.
Along with me turning nice and old, we had a pretty amazing week for missionary work as well. We picked up a really promising new investigator who's about 17 years old that's been to church a lot and has really enjoyed it. He loves the youth and he watched general conference and thought it was amazing. We started teaching him with the family he comes to church with and he's been really receptive and now his mom wants to come because she "loves the changes she's seen in her son." Yay for the gospel! I had a really cool experience with a less active person last Thursday. I was on splits with a kid in our ward and I just decided to go to a woman's house that hasn't been to church in two years. She always lets us teach her and her daughter when we go but that's about as effective as it had ever gotten at her house. Well, this time I started talking to her and felt like I should just flat out ask why she hasn't been to church. I was a little nervous about that, and then all the sudden the opportunity just presented itself out of nowhere. I asked in a polite way, and then she just opened up about all of these things about how she misses it and wants to get be worthy to go to the temple again. She stopped coming to church because someone really offended her and her daughter (her daughter's eleven) and she went on about how she knows that's no excuse and a bunch of other stuff. I started talking to her about the sacrament and she said how she used to be at a point where she hated going a week without it and she really wants to get back to that mindset. Weird and hard to describe the experience, but from then on I started speaking to her as...not really myself. I knew the things I started telling her were what the Spirit wanted her to know and it was just like a constant flow of information and love from Heavenly Father. It was a pretty incredible feeling...and she was very appreciative of everything when we left. We're going back again this week- and hopefully we'll get her to church.
That's about it for the week- thanks again for everything!
Elder B
