Hi Mom!
This week was a good one! As you can see from all of these photos. It was also a pretty fun one!
To start off lets talk about how much I love being on a mission. Yes it has its hard times and its even harder times. But as it says in Doctrine and Covenants Section 122 verse 7:
“And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.”
I have gained a lot of experience this week! As my companion put it “this week has been short but long.” And that couldn’t have been more true. This week we hit our weekly goal of finding two new people to teach! And they where both miracles. But one in particular stands out. Elder Shaw and I where doing our weekly walk ins (we live in the same apartment) with our district leader and we had just finished talking about how we can find more people to teach when we get a self referral! So we called them immediately. They seemed super interested and Elder Shaw and I where just so excited!
Oh! I bore my testimony this last sunday! Church was cancelled last week because of snow (like and inch 😂) so we had a testimony meeting this week. Before I got up a councilor of the bishopric was bearing his testimony about service and made a comment about how we have an Elder with the last name Service. So you know I just had to get up haha! But it was great I bore my testimony about service and how blessed I was to grow up serving the community every saturday with AYSO. Then ended with the Moroni 7 verse about how charity is the pure love of Christ.
Anywho on to the pictures!!! So we got a little roudy on wednesday and decided to climb up on the church after district council. Which made for some pretty awesome photos! (Credit goes out to Sister Hodgson for documenting the whole thing)
My goal to get a photo in front of as many inspiring Church signs is doing fabulously! Also my comp can apparently jump! HAHA
Lastly, for Valentines day we decided to go around “heart attacking” everyone we have had the opportunity of speaking to. There is a actually a really cool story about this; So we start driving off to deliver our six heart attacks right, and while we are driving we find a guy whose front tire has completely been destroyed. We ask if we can help and he says no and that he had a tow truck coming so we wished him luck and continue with our business at hand. We drop off our first one with a really nice couple that feeds us cookies while we have gospel conversations. Also Elder Shaw almost kills himself jumping into the car since these heart attacks have to be a surprise and we basically doorbell ditch 😂. So onto the next victim, the other Elders have been in contact with this family for a while and we all have even helped them renovate their house a little bit. Anyway, as we are setting up their door their son looks out the window and points at us! So we finnish what we can and GET OUT of there! The next house was a lady the other Elders actually have on baptismal date! Nothing crazy happened there it was actually quite smooth. Next we make our way to an apartment complex to drop off an attack to a lady the other Elders have been trying to contact for a while, and what ya know, the guy we saw when we first started this whole adventure was finishing up having his car towed! We straight up saw this guy like 20 minutes earlier! So that was kinda cool! This heart attack was pretty smooth too aside from seeing that one guy again. Then Elder Shaw and I took a heart attack to a lady we helped move a mail box for a while back. And as I was putting on the final heart she opens the door! Haha I was so terrified!! But it was all good she really appreciated it. And finally we had one last heart attack to deliver and we had no idea who we should give to. Then Elder Shwalberg had the impression to give it to a lady who lives right across from our apartment. As we watched from the little peep hole of our apartment door she looked so happy to have gotten this. And it turns out, it meant a whole lot more to her than we could have even imagined! Her husband proposed to her on valentines day and he had just died the year before. I was truly a touching moment for her and for us! In total we had 120 paper hearts and 6 people had a happy valentines day!
Aside from all of that, in all seriousness this transfer has started off rough. I wasn’t sure I’d get along with my companion. Plus opening up an area that already has two Elders was really difficult (we basically had to find people in an area that had already been searched) However, just as the lord tells Joseph Smith “all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.” and oh boy have I learned a ton! I am excited for this next week and potentially next transfer with Elder Shaw! It has been a lot of fun being with him and I have a really good feeling about the next few weeks!
Till next time,
Elder Service
